Songs of Mars
by Danny Barefoot
Summary: AU. A new first meeting between our cute musicians, on a very different Mars.
1. Chapter 1

_Or ever the knightly years were gone,_

_With the old world to the grave,_

_I was the King of Babylon,_

_And you were a Christian Slave._

_–W.E. Henley_

* * *

The faint music had already died away when Tuesday, daughter to Countess Simmons, realised it hadn't been a dream. She shivered, from something quite different from the cold, beneath her white faux-fur coat. Every part of Alba City was cold, except for her mother's airlock-sealed castle, and every street under the city's dome was ill-lit. She couldn't perceive where the song had come from, until a dark-skinned girl–a Terran!–sprinted out of an alley with three blue-jacketed soldiers pounding behind her.

The lead man seized the girl's ragged shirt. She swung a strange long box she carried into his jaw. Then a kick sent her down to the street–the _crunch_ through her stomach made Tuesday cry out. The soldiers heard nothing but the call of their duty–Tuesday saw a boot rise, above the girl's fingers, and she screamed.

"STOP! Do not hurt her! I-I-I, in the name of Simmons, I command you!"

Indoctrinated from birth to obey the nobles whose power maintained their lives, the soldiers snapped to attention in mid-blow. Tuesday fell to her knees over the slim, moaning Terran at their feet. The noble girl could taste iron in her own mouth–on Mars, the dust like blood was everywhere. She brushed back a blonde strand, smiled warmly–and flinched back from a dark eyed street-rat's glare.

"My lady!" A soldier barked, "It is unsafe for you to get any closer to this ape!"

"What has she done?" The soldiers stood cloddishly silent. She tried again, "What was her crime?"

"Public disturbance, my lady. There were complaints."

"What for?"

"This is a filthy Terran savage, my lady, loose in the streets!" They must have decided she was too refined to know what a Terran was, "We will remove her from your presence, of course–to the ice mines, or the outlying farms, if it is your wish–"

"–dead inside a year. I won't go. Just get it over with." The dark Terran girl groaned, "And go back to your castle, you useless princess!"

The reason Tuesday had snuck out from the castle, against her mother's wishes, was hunger. The mysterious bright threads that sang out verses between her head and heart had cried out for experience. Inspiration, from the activity and struggle outside, that the castle's cavernous silence never gave. Someday, she would receive the alien power of Aldnoah, by which the nobles maintained the great machines that permitted life on Mars. Her own spark of lyrical magic would be swallowed up by duties; the cold night of Mars, it seemed, was ready to silence her.

Only her mother had ever called her useless, before–this was a _very_ new experience. The sad pang in her heart, because it was true, but a longing and hope. In the fire of this dark girl's lips, a half-promise of warmth. Her stubborn strength fluttered Tuesday's heart.

"What is that box you have, Terran?" She remembered to wave a soldier back from kicking the poor thing again.

"…a keyboard."

"A musical instrument? Could you…play it for me? Please?"

"Sure! You want me to dance for you as well?"

But she smiled as she said it, with pleasant mockery. As if the soldiers, even this world of iron, were a mere joke next to the music that both of them shared at a glance. The girl unfolded her keyboard; the three soldiers stared. Musical instruments were a Terran decadence–on the austere and unforgiving red planet, almost unknown.

Slim brown fingers ran over the keys, and it was the music of Tuesday's dreams. The lilting tune touched her, like something she'd longed for and never known–her heart almost hammered her chest apart. The hum from her lips became her song, embracing the Terran girl's tune with fumbling passion. Dark eyes went very wide, but her fingers never stopped playing. The three soldiers stood by and stared.

_It's a little cold in paradise tonight_

_Love faded_

_I'm finding new forms, I write it out_

_It's fine for now_

_Then you come along and I cry_

_Liberated_

_I'm seeing clearly now, there's no turning back_

_And I'm overwhelmed_

_Do you really want to set the night on fire?_

_You're my only way out_

_Do you really want to turn your life around again?_

_You know you're my last chance…_

Alone on a cold and hostile world, far from Earth, the Terran girl threw her head back. She gazed through the dome to the unseen stars. Then she nodded, with a gentleness filled with her latent strength, and smiled back at the noble girl who still sang. They knew they could have met on any world that could be, in any circumstance, and their music would be the only thing that mattered. They sang through the chorus once more–for their first time, together.

_Can you feel my..._

_Can you feel my..._

_Can you feel my tears? They won't dry_

_Can you feel my..._

_Can you feel my teardrops of the loneliest girl?_

_The loneliest girl…_

The Terran girl gave a slow bow to Tuesday when she finished, who glowed with joy. The soldiers had no idea what to do, except tell every one of their mates about this story as soon as they could. But then a larger party of soldiers rounded the corner, led by Baron Spencer, Tuesday's brother. As he drawled out that she was running away from home a tad too often, a soldier grabbed the Terran girl to haul her away.

"Brother! I promise you will not have to worry about me running away again. So long as we return with this Terran girl, who I wish to employ as my personal servant."

Tuesday would have hung onto her Terran girl any way, and this was the only way. The dark lady of her heart's music rolled her eyes and smiled defiantly back.

"I have a name, you know. I'm Carole. Milady."

"Then you can be my sister's Christmas present." Baron Spencer muttered.

Carole looked skittish, to say the least. If she had run, Tuesday would have too. But in the end they were escorted to the castle together, already considering their first song for further touches they could give it. Hands shaking, close to each other, and the future suddenly unwritten.


	2. Chapter 2

Nobles of Vers slept in spartan rooms, and Tuesday's was particularly small. There were still smartwalls set to midnight blue and a personal holographic shrine to Princess Asseylum Vers Allusia. A patch of smartwall had become reflective so that Carole could see how she looked in Tuesday's best white crinoline dress. The Terran girl stretched out her hands and twirled to the mirror. The noble girl in pink polyester pyjamas swung her feet from the bed.

"Carole, you look so pretty."

"It's your dress, m'lady. Doesn't really fit me."

"Um, I didn't mean the dress…"

"Oo, you sweet talking thing, you!" Tuesday blushed as Carole laughed from her stomach; the blonde couldn't tear her eyes from those lively lips, "A cutie like you must have a few young nobles pining for her, right? M'lady?"

"Oh no…and you can call me Tuesday when we're alone."

"Okay, Tues!" A nickname…her blush deepened at the boldness.

"I…don't say I'm cute. True noble ladies of Vers are strong warriors, or cool beauties."

"Tues, if you weren't a real noble, you couldn't have saved me. But you're not like other nobles, not a bit like the other Versians. You're kind."

"No. Princess Asseylum is kinder and stronger than anyone, let alone me–and Versians can be kind. Have you met every Versian, or any other Nobles?"

"The only one who saved me was you, m'Lady. I certainly never heard of that princess doing a thing for Terrans or Third-Class–"

"Carole!" Tuesday shrank back in sudden indignation, "She has a Terran boy as her servant and tutor! If she hadn't, I would not have dared…I'm sorry, I understand that you weren't born to our ways, but please don't blaspheme against Princess Asseylum or the royal family again. She's beautiful, strong and kind! The bearer of Aldnoah's light and humanity's hope!"

"Okay. Sorry, Tues." Carole raised her hands, "Princess Asseylum is great and kind and strong, fo' sho'…though you were strong enough for yourself, just then."

Carole could see that speaking any ill of Tuesday's idol and goddess might even make her expel her new friend back onto the streets with tears. Where she'd always lived, with her music–but she did not want to lose Tuesday or see her cry. It just hurt that her saviour thought less of herself than she did of Princess let-them-eat-cake.

Tuesday gazed at Carole, almost as if an irrepressible, beautifully wild brown animal had appeared in her bedroom. Her lips trembled again from fear or excitement.

The Terran girl spread her arms for a make-up hug, and they ended up clasping hands on Tuesday's slim but comfortable bed. Terran and noble, resting their foreheads together in the peace of silence.

"Sorry, Tues." Carole finally said, again, "Your big brother must be kind too."

"Yes. He's kind, cool and handsome…but he has so many useless ceremonies and parades, as the heir. I don't feel like I really know him."

"What about your mother, Tues?"

"She's cool. But she…she…"

Tuesday clung to Carole's hand in silence. She stroked her stiff hair, like none she'd touched before; most of the Martian colonists had come from overburdened China, and the first nobles had followed Emperor Rayregelia from the USSR. Carole should have minded but didn't. She counted the freckles on Tuesday's cheeks, and tried to calculate how cute they made her.

Afterwards they got out Carole's keyboard and worked out music for one of the many poems Tuesday had written in praise of Princess Asseylum. Carole was chill with that. She could guess the words groped for all that her lady wished she could be. All that Carole knew she could and should be. All that hundreds more fearful little girls across Mars dreamt of.

She suggested a few more lines about sweetness and courage than the power of Aldnoah. Tuesday floated back her own thoughts, and Carole leaned in to hear them, hungrily.

-0-

It took a few dizzying days of exploring the castle, with its holoscreens and hissing doors, as well as stuffing herself with vac-packed chicken instead of rotten plankton from the bottom of the tank, while Tuesday watched in fascination…before Carole proposed to retrieve a few possessions from the downtown squat where she had been sleeping before. She didn't want Tuesday to send her servants for them; she wanted Tuesday to come with her.

The blonde fidgeted in the back of the hood-shaped electric van, charged wirelessly by the the Castle's unfailing Aldnoah drive. A soldier with a bullpup rifle rode with the driver. Vers only knew little crimes among the little people, that never touched the nobility–but it was thought right to provide a visual reminder of why that was so.

Carole defiantly crossed her legs and put her arms behind her head, as the van purred through the bare metallic houses. She didn't care for the long black servant's dress, but it was better than a blue uniform. And Baron Spencer had quietly warned her that the Countess would throw her out before Carole's eyes if she didn't conform in appearances.

"So, um, Carole…what did you _do_, before?"

"If we weren't in the army, we grew plankton or hauled mine-ice, or mended things, m'lady. Or we worked in factories, or went up to fix the dome, or cleaned red dust out of everywhere it got, which was everywhere. All the crud that keeps Vers a'tickin', m'lady."

"I didn't mean I was ignorant of what _workers_ do." Tuesday pouted, "Nobles learn about all the necessary matters that sustain our mission on Mars. My mother wields the power of Aldnoah, but our workers devote their lives to each task with deserved respect and pride. I've actually thought of writing a song about it. Anyway, I was asking what _you_ did."

"As little as possible, except playing my keyboard and running from the bluejackets."

On the harsh, unliveable red planet, the cold frontier, every worker's devotion was demanded. Tuesday should have been appalled, but she wasn't. She stared at Carole's brown arms, slim but strong.

"Carole, um, how did you first come to Vers? So few of your people come here…"

"Some of us ain't fools, and some of us didn't come willing." Carole sighed and gritted her teeth, "My mother was a soldier on the Moonbase, in the war fourteen years ago. They mostly surrendered, and they mostly got hauled back to Vers through the hypergate as POWs. Before it blew up, and they were stuck here. My mother was maybe two months gone with me, when she was taken, so I've always been stuck on this planet too. No idea about my dad–she never wanted to talk about the war."

"She didn't...? Oh Carole, I'm so sorry!"

"She got ill. It happens, a lot."

"But, on Vers, building the future of humanity…was she happy? At all?"

"When she talked about Earth, sometimes. Sunlight on the South African grasslands. Running horses, clean water…I don't know. Of course, there's places on Earth with no clean water, and racist idiots. I guess you learnt all about that in Vers school for nobles, like we did."

"Oh, yes. Carole, I think it's so stupid that Terrans would hate you just for the beautiful colour of your skin! Vers is all about a new humanity, without racism, or sexism, or…I know it's hard that there's so little on Mars to go around, but any noble can elevate a Second, even a Third Class citizen, if they're good enough. And nobles who are no good can be dismissed, or disinherited…and once your people see the light of Aldnoah, Vers' greatness, we can all live in peace together!"

"That's the idea, ain't it? You saved me, Tues, and maybe you couldn't have done that on Earth, but my mother's still dead. People steal scraps from each other, or they starve, and when they get too old or ill to work, they get their cyanide pills. Promise you, I've seen it–and the nobles don't help us. What do their big ceremonies have to do with surviving on Mars, and what do their big robots have to do with peace?"

"I'm sorry…" Carole hung her head, for a moment, "…but even if it's a dream, even if people forget, can't they remember again? Can't music make our dreams come true? I'm so sorry about your mother, I'm so sorry…"

"It's okay. You didn't do anything. I tried to write a song about her…but it wasn't any good."

-0-

Downtown, whatever UV shielding the habitats boasted was homemade or cracked. There was little sunlight on Mars, but little atmosphere to hold back the invisible and deadly radiation. The great Aldnoah planet engines had brought gravity and temperature within the bounds of liveability, and built the domes to maintain an atmosphere where humans could breathe and liquid water could flow. The colossal domes were always showing cracks, however, so the work gangs always had work. The nobles had built, and urged their people to breed, for a nation of billions. But there was no Aldnoah engine for food or soil, so the darkened suburbs of the final frontier were still ghost towns.

"…so, what do the workers do when they're not working? Make music?"

"A bit, Tues…but not so much of anything. There's social hubs. TV showing the glorious Versians beating the Terrans, and reruns of old speeches, Emperor Rayregalia _or_ Gilzeria–everyone watches them, but there's nothing else to do. They might go stir crazy without any work, only less of them would die. I'd have gone crazy if my friend's Dad hadn't given me my keyboard. All the soldiers must be even more bored, actually, unless they enjoy kicking heads in."

There was one young man, with darker skin than Carole, loitering on the street where the van stopped. He had been waiting and watching over her squat for days. Now he watched his childhood friend, a Terran like him, step out beside a noble in a servant's dress.

"Amer! I–"

The Terran boy, from across the street, sent a perfectly targeted gobbet of spittle into Carole's face and ran. Carole screamed at Tuesday's bodyguard not to shoot. Tuesday's first thought, after getting a hanky for Carole's poor face, was to tell him to shoot that awful man–but that would have ended a life, and her heart quickly recoiled. The (fairly handsome) bodyguard obeyed his young mistress, though he quietly sent a description of the Terran to all nearby patrols.

"Oh, Carole! How horrible, how could he…"

"It's okay." Tuesday saw Carole's arms were trembling, but her lips stayed firm, "I understand how he feels."

"I don't! I mean, I suppose he's jealous of you, he thinks you've betrayed your people by not cutting my throat in bed or something–!"

"Calm down, Tues. Deep breaths." The blonde girl obeyed, squeezed Carole's hands on her shoulders, "Well done. I know that guy; he was my friend. Hot-head kind of guy you know? He's a musician like us."

"Surely not!"

"Sure enough. I'd show you one of his music vids, but you'd get upset again and we'd both get disappeared by secret security."

-0-

Carole's former squat would have been messy it wasn't almost bare. There were blankets, metal offcuts made into trays or partitions. No shower, like the one that gave strictly rationed water to Tuesday's bathroom. Carole calmly explained that the neighbourhood had one washhouse, and a few illegal taps on the water main, as she pulled an owl-shaped alarm clock from a space under the floor. Tuesday kneel beside her, and asked again about Amer.

"His parents were actually defectors from Earth," Carole told her, "Not scientists, politicals. They thought Aldnoah and glorious Vers would make a new world of peace and plenty. Unity and discipline. No racism or corrupt and failed democracy. 'No one for a party, and all men for the state. When the great ones help the poor and poor men love the great.'"

"…his majesty the Emperor's Independence Address. Paragraph 5, line 3." Tuesday's Versian upbringing allowed her only one response, "That is the dream that is Vers."

"I know. We learnt all the Emperor's speeches in school, and if we couldn't quote it like that, they flogged us. I got flogged a lot…but, it was the same for you? How did you survive that, Tues?"

"I did my best to learn off all the speeches. My tutor didn't cane me that much. What about Amer's parents…?"

"They worked up on the dome, with my mother. She was a POW, that made her a slave–and Amer's folks worked as hard as her. His Dad died falling from the dome, his mother got bone cancer. The Third Class Martians up there get proper suits and doctors, but the UV kills them too."

Tuesday couldn't speak. Carole drew her last treasure from the under-floor space. A Gibson Hummingbird guitar, battered and chipped. Tuesday stared with wide blue eyes, as the Terran girl stood up.

"This belonged to my mother. I don't know what she had to do, getting it from Earth to the Moon, then to Vers, protecting and keeping hold of it. She never played so much, when she wasn't working, but she kept it. It was Amer's father who gave me my keyboard. He was a big jazz musician on Earth; I guess he thought that some groovy tunes were what the frontier needed. He did some concerts at the social hub, but they came and said he had to build up glorious Vers on the dome. They almost smashed the keyboard–called him a workshy, useless parasite–"

"That's what my mother called me. When Baron Ertegan's family cancelled my engagement."

The words spilt from the noble girl's lips against her will. Carole's eyes widened with shock.

"Engaged? Tues, you're fourteen…"

"I would have been married at sixteen. To multiply Vers' noble population, swiftly–to built up the kinships and alliances that keep them from tearing each other apart–it was my duty. I'm the youngest daughter, I could never ride a Kataphrakt into battle, I can't even do science work in a lab, or any work…I could only hide in my room and write poems! I messed it up. I was a coward, the shame of mother and Clan Simmons, the Baron couldn't bring himself, even for Vers, to marry such a useless girl, and all the Clans know, none of them ever will! Mother almost disinherited me…but there's nothing now, except hiding in my room forever until I'm old and crazy! Nothing I can do for sacred Vers, nothing I can do…"

Carole dropped her knees and held Tuesday firm as love or death. The noble girl, ugly with weeping, tried to push her away–but Carole wouldn't be held back. She buried her face in Tuesday's neck and warmed her body with her own.

"Carole…your mother, your friends, what you all suffered! My, my failure is nothing next to all of y-your pain…!"

"It's not nothing."

"I'm so pathetic. All this wrong, I don't know what to do."

"Just keep singing. Keep making music. I love your songs, Tuesday. I love you. That's all you need to do, make music."

"Oh, Carole…"

The Terran girl finally stepped back and held out her mother's Hummingbird Gibson to Tuesday. Who drew back, shaking her head.

"I couldn't possibly take this…your mother, I…"

"I think you were meant to have it, Tues. Mum would've wanted you to play it, like I never could–and come on, you saved my life already!"

Carole had seen, through Tuesday's tears, the electric connection formed from the moment she'd glimpsed the guitar. The little blonde girl reached out for the instrument, plucked one high note, and sat down to work out how to tune it.

Back at Castle Simmons, Tuesday didn't feel up to writing a protest song straight away, and her poems about the princess or the nobility of labour rang hollow. She buried herself in her bedroom with Carole, swiftly and painfully got her finger clefts in, and clung to the old guitar as if she had never known before what love was. There were screams of frustration, and there was joyful laughing together.

Chords and tunes soon danced softly and surely from the tower of Castle Simmons. The Countess was visiting the capital that month, so only her brother heard the music and smiled.

The song they wrote was about a soldier who'd been lost in the war, but she was still alive. A miner who'd been buried under the ice, but she was living still. A dome mender who had slipped and fallen from the heavens, but he was still around, and now they knew he always would be.

_"I fly a starship,_

_Across the Universe divide._

_And when I reach the other side,_

_I'll find a place to rest my spirit if I can._

_Perhaps I may become a soldier once again,_

_Or I may simply be a single drop of rain._

_But I will remain._

_And I'll be back again, and again and again and again and again…"_

They were silent for a minute when they'd finished their work. Then they tested together on Tuesday's bed, in contented exhaustion


	3. Chapter 3

Mars might have been obliged to roll on in its orbit forever without fields, clouds, dancing laundromats, or many other things–but it could still make a boast of its Southern Lights. Charged particles rode the solar wind through the scanty atmosphere, to perhaps more than five times nearer the ground than any aurora on Terra. The holo-screen above Tuesday's bed was filled with a dancing curtain of light, a window to a magical sky and the endless frontier of space, beyond.

Tuesday and Carole solemnly gazed up at the video, hugging the blankets between them like one body pillow. Tuesday's left-hand fingers clung to the keys of her guitar, stood beside the bed–she had barely let go of it in two months, even as she embraced her Terran partner. Both of them had almost more to write and play and sing than they could bear–an avalanche of the unwritten that their slender, pretty tunes could barely pluck at.

Still, there was a peace in lying under the aurora. Knowing there was more wonder on Mars alone than could ever be spoken or sung, even by the two of them.

"…_the dancing lights…_" Tuesday hummed, "…_have seen strange sights_…_the strangest they'll ever see_…?"

She glanced at the Terran girl whose face lay near; her strange bedfellow and best friend. A flower of blue fire, so bright it was solid, blossomed and dissolved above them. Their fingers joined together as they watched, and didn't even part when they could speak again.

"Tues, that was awesome."

"We must go south and see that sky together. I promise I'll take you, one day."

"It's okay. Everything you've done already, I couldn't put you to more trouble."

"Oh, you couldn't be…"

"I know you got your troubles, Tues. You taught me that there's beauty and good on Mars–and that nobles have their troubles too."

-0-

Countess Simmons would never had allowed Carole under her roof, had she not given up all positive hope for her unmarriageable, unmanageable, talentless and useless daughter, years ago–and had she not recalled the Terran proverb of the carrot and stick. Tuesday had been summoned to the presence, given an acidic dressing down that touched on all the qualities aforesaid, and told that she could keep her guitar-thing and distasteful new pet if she obeyed her lord and mother from henceforth. No more running away, no more leaving the Castle, no more hiding in her room from ceremonies and troop reviews. Whenever another husband was found for her, all decadent and unseemly music would stop.

So Tuesday couldn't take a maglev to the south with her friend and partner–who she knew would be banished, flogged or killed, if she defied her mother at all. She had stood silent under Countess Simmons' verbal lash for an hour. Then sat for an hour in broken silence, clinging to her guitar.

She was aware that the servants who attended to her needs obeyed her mother's orders. She couldn't command them; they paid her precisely the least respect than any noble of Vers could be paid. All knew she would never receive the hallowed Aldnoah activation rights. As for Carole, she saw it all, and heard more talk between the servants than wanted to trouble her friend with.

-0-

"You've got something to lose, Tues." She did tell the noble girl, "You need to think about yourself, your future. I don't ever want to be a trouble to you, or a burden."

"That's sweet. But isn't it silly, saying you don't want to impose when you're already here? When you're not going away, because I want us to stay together forever?"

"You got me, but–"

"Dear Carole, I never had any place in this house before, or any future. Now, I've got you, and our music–it feels more magical than the light of Aldnoah itself, because its mine, and ours, and we can make our own feelings into beautiful and new! I want to be as selfish as I can, for as long as we can go, and do nothing but make wonderful music with you. I want to be like a charged speck in the aurora, blazing across the sky until I fall…hey, that could be a song!"

"'Course it could, Tues."

Carole smiled like a patient cat, laying her head on one side.

Tuesday seized up her guitar again, blue eyes shining with expectation. Carole unpacked her keyboard. They spent the afternoon thrashing out a song about blazing comets and shooting stars. Both their efforts dwelt on the final and lonely croon of the star's fall–showing once again both the strange and beloved synchronicity that bound together their hearts, and their shared understanding that sadness, captured in song, could be a fount of courage and joy.

Still, Tuesday presently perceived that while she was riding high and careless on a wave of song, Carole was heavy and unsmiling, as she bent over her keyboard. Her friend was naturally the practical one; yet she insisted that nothing was wrong whenever Tuesday asked.

"I want you to be selfish as well, Carole." Tuesday lowered her eyes, "I want to make lots of music, with you…and I want to be good to you. Tell me anything I can do–I know I can't do much when I can't leave the Castle–but anything you want…?"

In fifteen years of hated and hunted poverty, Carole had managed to forget how to want. The Versians had never stopped kicking her because she wanted them, or begged them, to stop. Want was never going to give her a home or a liveable job, or bring her mother back. Her keyboard, a roof, as much food as her small hands and stomach could hold–no one acting on their desire to beat her half to death–that had needed to be enough for her to smile and say she was happy.

Now, she had a roof, four walls and a bed. Three small meals a day. No security or future–but one friend. She was so grateful to Amer, his parents and her lost Terran friends, some of whom were dead, that although she had forgotten how to want–she had never forgotten how to love.

Tuesday looked very cute when her lip trembled, and quite delicate. Carole smiled bravely into the vivid blue eyes of her precious friend and said she didn't want anything else.

"…but, how about another song?"

Tuesday still asked her again if she was really okay. Later on, she begged Carole to stay beside her all night, and fall asleep in her bed–but the Terran girl departed with apologies for the bedroll she'd lain out in the storeroom where she slept most nights. Tuesday was a bit sad, but she knew that lonely girl sometimes needed their own time and space.

-0-

Of course Carole told Tuesday what she knew of Earth, though she had never seen there. Trees and beavers, grasslands and wild horses–they crafted a song about wild horses they were really pleased with. And how stableboys had looked after these horses, and lonely young noble girls in trashy romance novels were always pining after these stableboys. And how Roddy, Clan Simmons' _wunderkind_ young Kataphrakt engineer was probably the closest thing on Mars to a stableboy–and hadn't he saved Tuesday from getting her skirt caught in an airlock when she was ten, and didn't she blush whenever–?

–at this point started whacking Carole with a pillow, shrieking with embarrassment as her friend crowed with delight. She had indeed been carrying a silent torch, ever since the airlock mishap five years ago, for the quiet redhead who attended to her mother's titanic steel steed.

"…but he's a commoner, so it's hopeless…and he could do much better than a hopeless girl like me."

"No, no, you're kind, and you are so, so cute, lovergirl." Tuesday grimaced, and fought off Carole's cheek pinch, "Any guy who didn't want you would have to be an idiot. Only that rules out just about all of them…but what did you say about being selfish? Just tell the guy how you feel about him."

"Oh, Carole, I couldn't, I'm not brave like you…Carole, have you, um, been with, um, guys? Do you, ah, knowwhattheylike…?"

"Okay, that sounded weird, Tues. I know you nobles get hitched pretty young, but on Earth…?"

"…my tutor told me that Terrans have always had so much food and water that all they need to do for survival is, um…breed. He told me it was Terran nature…"

"…to think of practically nothing but sex all day?"

Carole stepped with dignity off the bed and turned her face toward the wall. She didn't exactly know that her people had been tarred with the same fallacious slander by other Terrans, ever since they'd been taken out of Africa–but she felt it.

"I know that most of the things they tell us about Terrans aren't true," Tuesday hesitantly blundered on, "But Carole, I've been wondering if you mightn't have wanted to, um, go out and meet someone? Maybe a Terran boy? You're always so bold and outgoing, and I know I sometimes get really, um, frustrated…"

"The word is horny. You like guys. You were going to get married at sixteen."

"Not because I wanted to! It was just my duty. I'm not–"

"–a Terran slut? I'm sorry, Tues, you aren't. They were going to force you to get married at sixteen. You finally said you didn't want to! Like I never wanted to spread my legs for any ugly old man, just because he's one of about a dozen Terrans with a _dick_, on this lying, evil, blood-stinking, shit-gut planet! Full of men who would've raped me if I'd stayed out alone a bit later or run a bit slower–who raped my friends and called them Terran whores! _Fuck Vers_, fuck its idiot, stuck-up bastard-feudal system! Fuck the light of Aldnoah! Fuck every man on this planet and fuck the royal family!"

Carole was tough, Tuesday knew, but she had never heard her swear. She'd known her Terran friend had only survived in Vers by crushing all of her rage, loneliness and need under a smile and a song. But she hadn't known how scary it would be when the lid blew off, or how sad. She knew she would never be free of this sadness while she and Carole, and Vers, existed, because people were dying, children were being taught in Versian schools to hate and lie–and all she could do was sing. It felt like the walls had blown off her room, but she was trapped.

-0-

The door hissed shut, as Carole fled. Tuesday spent some time curled on her bed in a broken state. Then she left her guitar and went to the Castle's Kataphrakt bay.

Sitting in the shadow of a silver Argyre kataphrapht, Roddy was tweaking its software via his communicator. The young engineer snapped clumsily to attention, as soon as he noticed Tuesday wringing her hands in her long white skirt.

"…M-m-mr Roddy? My Terran friend Carole has…run away. I don't if she's still here, in the Castle, I-I-I I'm sorry, but please…!"

"Of course I'll help you look for her, Milady. I'm sure she hasn't left Castle Simmons…she, um, wouldn't leave you."

Tuesday's blue eyes stared. The redhaired boy looked away and scratched his nose.

"Pardon me, but I've, um, seen you with your friend, Milady." He explained, "It's clear that she, um, loves you a great deal. Pardon me saying so, but I think your friendship with a Terran girl is beautiful."

Tuesday dropped to her knees, broken and burning with joy and relief. She wouldn't have been able to face Carole, or go on at all, if they hadn't been at least one good man left on Vers.

They found Carole crouched under a staircase, with a black eye and her dress torn. There were fresh bruises on her slim, beautiful neck. Tuesday fell on her, buried her eyes, dreading to ask what had happened.

Carole had jostled a Versian maidservant while running from Tuesday's room and not stopped to give a humble apology. The woman, with another maid and their boyfriends, had decided to hunt down the Terran street rat and teach her a lesson.

"They just beat me up. Then I ran. I'm okay. I'm sorry I got so angry back there, Tues."

Roddy, at least, could see in Carole's eyes that this wasn't the first time. Glares, threats, blows–there was nowhere a Terran on Vers could escape such things, but Carole had gone from the open streets to confinement in a castle of her tormentors. Still, she had smiled every day, and said she was happy. Flitted her fingers over her keyboard, for Tuesday, always with joy in her heart.

Tuesday marched off with shaking knees, to rebuke the servants who'd beaten her friend. Roddy couldn't stop her, Carole went with her. It would've made things worse if the Terran girl had spoken up, so she stood with Tuesday, who clung to her sleeve as the servants spoke back to her, rudely. They were not prepared to be rebuked by a fake, pathetic noble, who'd been rejected by her own mother and had no future ahead but disinheritance. Or by her pet Terran carpet-muncher…Carole steered Tuesday away from the servant's hall at that point, back to their room, and held her until she stopped crying.

After, Roddy told the servants that he had hacked a security micro-drone; he had audio and video of the way they'd spoken to a noble of Vers. Whether or not Countess Simmons cared about her daughter, it would stain the honour of every asinine noble parasite on Vers (he said) if commoners could insult them with impunity. He told the servants they could start by apologising to both Lady Simmons and Miss Stanley, and that he and his friends might well have more to ask of them later.

-0-

That night, Tuesday asked Carole to show her everything. The Terran girl finally let her black dress fall to the floor and pulled off the top she wore underneath. Her slim body was marked, here and there, by untreated scratches, bruises and scrapes, some old and others not. The hands that brought Tuesday and her such joy were rough with scrapes–arresting falls, pushing up off the street, warding off blows. Though Carole would rather have let her face be scarred than risk damage to her fingers, human instinct was the same for all.

Her light brown skin did hide the marks more than her friend's paleness would have done. But the lattice of scars on her back stood out clear and white, as she turned from Tuesday's eyes.

"You should see Amer's back, Tues–my friend from before. He never made a sound–I only cried out once, or twice. We swore we wouldn't make a sound, for all the good it did. And we wouldn't learn off all those speeches about the glory of Vers, whatever they did."

Tuesday rested her blonde head on Carole's back. She cried for her friend, and Carole could finally shed tears with her.

Even before they sank together onto the bed, Tuesday had gently touched fingers and lips to Carole's scars. Not every one, but she had promised herself she would. She threw her own white dress away. Her friend's back was rough against her little breasts, her hair rough in her burning eyes, as they lay close together. Her fingers moved–the soft blue light from the walls darkened almost to black.

"I'm so sorry, Carole."

"You couldn't do any more than me. Don't worry."

"Don't say that. You had to bear so much, you were strong but it wasn't right…you're hurting."

"You're hurting too, my lady."

"Because I love you. And please don't call me anything but Tuesday again."

"Okay. And I love you too. And you're strong, too. With both of us, we'll get through somehow."

"Through to where? Where can we go, Carole? What do you want?"

It took a few hard minutes to come. Tuesday rubbed her partner's upper arm until she was ready.

"I want to write a song with you, that could make everyone in the universe feel what we feel. I want to play music and sing with you for the rest of our lives. I want to save my friend Amer, somehow, before he gets himself killed out there. I want to make them see we're not animals, and that you're the best, sweetest girl on this whole planet. I want to get off this dustbowl and fly all the way to Earth…I want to go home."

"Both of us? There's nothing for me here except Roddy, and I love you more."

"Thanks. We'll go together. Someday." A gulf of silence, "Also, I wanted to meet a good man, and fall in love. I was never a sex slut like they say, none of us are, I was just a teenager who wanted to fall in love and have sex someday. But there was nobody. Small choice, no choice. I couldn't want, had to forget it, never did any good…"

Tuesday felt Carole's heat through her arms and back. She didn't know how, because her own skin was blazing down to her toes–but she wouldn't move away.

"I…thought about it a little. What might have been, if I'd got married…"

"Ah, lovergirl! What about Roddy?"

"Maybe, a little…?" Carole's voice was very small. "Tues? Do the servants really think that we're, um…"

"Lovers? Yeah. Your mother doesn't think so, or she'd have killed me. I'm sorry, Tues, I slept in the storeroom most nights so she wouldn't think it…but I just couldn't give up being close to you like this."

Tuesday felt her pale hand stiffly moving from her friend's arm to her flat stomach. Then to her bum, as Carole slid around like a snake and dark eyes looked into hers. There was love and frustration, loneliness and need. Their legs shifted together, her skin was smoother and warmer than it should ever have been, as Carole took her by the nape of the neck and kissed her. Tuesday didn't know how she could move or think, but she was kissing back into her best friend's lively brown lips and letting Carole's tongue slide over her own in the darkness.

They didn't do much more than kiss; it was more than enough. Being two lonely girls who loved each other didn't determine whether it was women or men that they both wanted to make love to. On a different, freer Mars, they might never have kissed like lovers at all, but they did. It helped them both to sooth the desires that Vers had frustrated ever since they had grown into them. Tuesday fiercely felt the rebellion of her sinful submission, to a Terran's rough fingers and curious mouth. And it would have deepened their bond, except that they couldn't imagine how it could ever be deeper, or broken by anything in a hundred universes.

"Even if mother stops me playing music, or sends you away…I won't part from you." Tuesday whispered, "We could take the tasteless poison that Vers nobles take when they need to die with honour. But not for honour, or Vers, for you and me…I know even death won't part us, and I don't want to be away from you for a single minute…"

"I don't want you to die, Tues. I want you to live forever. If death wouldn't part us, then people can't either. We'll stay together, or we'll find each other, whatever happens, and we'll show them all."

"Oh, I love you so much…"

-0-

_…there's no need to be sad,_

_You're on a path and you know where it heads._

_There's no need for despair,_

_Just walk on and you'll find you are there._

_Someday I'll find the one,_

_The Earth and the stars will lead the way._

_All of these years alone,_

_They flew right by so what can you say._

_Someday I'll find my way home…_

They had spent the morning in their bed, in the Castle where they couldn't stay. Tuesday had listened to Carole pour out everything she had heard about the blue planet she'd only ever seen in the sky. They had their bond, on a world that hated them, but no home, so they had spent the next week writing a song about that. Then they had plucked and keened it out, sharing smiles and tears, their need and their hope. Tuesday had giggled as Carole kissed her little callused fingers, wondering if her partner would pull her back into bed. Though it was strange that something so fleshy as those hours so quickly seemed a dream.

The girls had talked about playing concerts, keyboard, piano and song, at the social hubs throughout Alba city and downtown. They might have comforted the people, or inspired them, or even shown them another way…more dreams. They did decide to play a few songs in a small private concert for Roddy, as a thank you for all his help.

The Kataphrakt bay echoed with their voices, as they swayed and closed their eyes against the bright music. It was the first time Tuesday had ever played for an audience; stiffening herself against the fear had been hard, but in the end it had felt glorious. Their audience of towering combat robots, of course, mustered no critical response to the songs of love and peace that mounted around their helm, however imposing they looked. Roddy's recording commlink hung from his hand, as his jaw hung from his head. Carole opened one eye to notice how he stared at Tuesday's waving golden hair and pure arms.

Afterwards, Carole pretended she had forgotten her lunchtime plankton pack; she left Roddy and Tuesday on their own together. As they picked at the tasteless food, the redhaired boy began to shyly discourse on Kataphrakt A.I., communication software, and the trade delegation to Terra that _might_ set out next year. Carole shyly listened, mostly wondering how any guy could be so thoughtful, kind and sweet, and how _any_ guy, even Roddy, could make her hot and bothered like this when she had Carole.

But Carole, her beloved friend, had urged her to tell Roddy that she had feelings for him. Love could be very strange. Of course, it wouldn't be simple; if they were caught, she'd be sent to her room and he'd be sent to the ice mines. The idea of, um, _being with_ a guy wasn't any less scary after her gentle fumblings with Carole, and she might never love any guy like her best friend, but that might not be so strange, and she still liked Roddy. Carole had told her that if everything was better when there were two of you, it had to be even better when there were three.

Sitting on Tuesday's bed and beating out a lonely rhyme with her hands, Carole reflected practically that people couldn't live their whole lives on the hook line of a love song. If you said that your lover and best friend was the only one you needed, they were just a human, and so were you. Humans fail, or demand, or have bad days; worshipful love could turn to poisonous hate. Securing her bond with Tuesday meant letting her grow, letting her go, seeking her best…not clinging to her and never letting her leave their bed, as she so _intensely_ almost desired to do.

She'd meet a guy she loved one day–a lot tougher and cooler, she expected, than that cutesy Versian egghead. Maybe it would be Amer, if she ever saw him again. But she knew her bond with Tuesday, her partner in music for life, would only grow stronger as they grew and walked their road, and wouldn't break.

-0-

There were many good men on Vers, although a great many of them were also racists primed for murder (This is one of the many problems with totalitarian dictatorships, or totalitarian bastard-feudal autocracies). There were also several organisations that could have been called the Resistance. There was Count Saazbaum's widespread conspiracy to exterminate the Imperial family, replacing it with Emperor Saazbaum, Dictator-for-life Saazbaum, or some more egalitarian government secretly and completely controlled by Saazbaum (possibly even the Count himself didn't know). There were quite a body, including high nobles, who wished to take Vers back to the true original ideals of Emperor Rayregalia, its founder and present absolute monarch…and there were a few fringe types who just wanted a little more social democracy and mobility, with more than a little less state terrorism.

Sergeant Gus Goldman was the nearest thing the Resistance had to a leader, and he had survived in this role by doing as little as he could get away with. Even the young and active Roddy hadn't done much more than work a subtle and fatal weakness into most of the Kataphrakts he'd designed, apart from the lack of seatbelts. Resistance could only survive in a secret police state by keeping its head down, against the day.

"…they're something special. It's _something_…a beautiful Versian noble and a Terran, playing once-in-a-decade songs about love and peace, on a planet without music!" Roddy paused to adjust his slipping grip on his phone, and went on with a little less heat, "We have to be able to do something with them!"

"They're something. I've seen the videos." Gus shifted his bulging stomach as he sat back, "But remember who else put out pirate anti-Vers music videos? Ezekiel, that kid Amer. You know Secret Security tracked him down last month? He wanted to light a fire; he going to die in the dark and silence."

"I g-get it…" Roddy wiped his sweat away, "But they'll think twice before they disappear a noble girl, for playing a song that isn't anti-Vers, just subversive, at Princess Asseylum's birthday celebrations. If you get that video to her, she's bound to invite them both."

"They might think twice, at that. What about the Terran girl?"

"We could think of something…"

"If not, she could maybe make a decent martyr? Okay, I'll talk to a friend in the palace, see what I can do…"


	4. Chapter 4

_…they say feudal state but they always feudin'_

_Bastard feudal is the new inhuman!_

_Nobles callin' me the lowest, just an en'my alien bum,_

_But they treat you like us Terrans, all those alien-blooded scum!_

_Mars-men octopussies who just take, take, take,_

_Third-Class be my brothers, but the Clans all gotta break._

_Break the Castles open, let the people share the food,_

_People always workin' while the redcoats just delude,_

_We don't need a princess barbie, we need nobles gone for good!_

_Or they lustin' over Earth with the envy eyes._

_'Til Third classes gonna school them, 'til the people rise._

_Vers, _reverse_! _

_Vers _reverse_! _

_Vers, reverse…!_

Carole held the computer tablet in one hand and Tuesday clung to her other, as they watched the illegal anti-Vers song released by Amer, Carole's former friend. _Ezekiel_, a skinny black Terran boy rapping out his fury, backed by dust-ruined farms and a harrowing musical thrum sampled from an alien invasion movie. His hand moved a tiger actually playing with its food; hungry but certain of victory. His knife-white smile made Tuesday shiver, and she could see Carole was transfixed.

"Don't forget he's a born performer," The Terran girl whispered when the screen went dark, "He cried sometimes, and cursed heaven. We've sat up all night listening to a dust storm, he'd tell me his dreams. We'd run from the Bluejackets together, just kids, and he'd laugh. I wish you'd seen all of him, anything but him spitting on me for loving a noble girl. If I had a hero, it'd still be him."

Roddy had set up a connection in the Kat hanger that even Secret Security probably couldn't spy on (Carole had urged Tuesday to kiss him, but she'd chickened out). He hadn't told the girls that Secret Security had tracked Ezekiel down a week ago. They were probably still torturing him for names, and his death would never be heard of. But somehow, Carole knew. When she took a step, her slim legs collapsed beneath her.

"Carole, I'm sorry…what should I do? What can I say?" Tuesday wrung her hands against tearful eyes, shaking, but not daring to move, "I didn't want to take you away from your friend. You should have smothered me in our bed for being a noble, like he'd have wanted. I know you love me, so I wouldn't have been afraid. I'm sorry, I should–"

"–don't you dare go away, Tues." Hard shell broken, Carole clung to Tuesday's skirt, "You're all I've got left, but if it cost my friends, my home, my life…I just want to be with you. Don't walk away from me! Please…"

Tuesday sank into Carole's arms and squeezed her. Her Terran love sobbed into her hair, deep and heaving, for a long time. The silent Kataphrakts loomed over them, high as heavens of stone.

"Carole, I think…maybe I hate Vers? A little?"

"I reckon I'll hate it for as long as I miss Amer and love you."

They held each other. On a planet where people were tortured and killed for making music, but they could not stay silent.

-0-

They crafted their song for poor Amer from an unfinished piece, whose true face they'd never seen before. The sadness of what they did, and what they could never change, made them blaze through the song in only a day. Tuesday pressed record, on the unregistered comm Roddy had given her, without their speaking a word as to what that meant.

_Stranded in the city_

_That doesn't hold me down_

_Silencing my feelings_

_Desert skies of red again_

_Message from a lost friend_

_Whispering in the wind_

_Lower down your crying_

_Keep the paper lantern lit._

_Keep the pain and fury, the dreaming too,_

_We found our way…but we lost you._

_Lost my heart when I lost my friend,_

_Can't we come together and start again…?_

Carole's voice almost broke with grief, for the friend who had spurned her–who might have bitterly regretted what he had done in pain and rage, but who she would never see again in this world. Her fingers pressed on, over the keys. Tuesday sang her lungs out for her partner's sake.

If they only gave Roddy a voice recording, they would be safe. Probably. Carole talked about running away, if Secret Security came after them–Tuesday couldn't run or hide, but they wouldn't hurt a noble.

"How can you even talk about leaving me here? And what would they do to you? If they come for us, we should kill ourselves–"

"–NO! Please, Tues, never even talk about killing ourselves again! We found each other, we have to live and never give up! Not even for your noble honour!"

Tuesday's body slumped towards the floor with her eyes. Carole patiently stroked her face.

"Oh, Carole…dishonour means being cast out. Hated. I'm less afraid of death than being hated…I couldn't bear it without you. That's why I'm so afraid, I'm so weak…"

"They always hated me, Tues. It was awful, but it was better than being dead, and I'm with you now. They hated you too. Your mother, all those noble pigs–said you were useless, and it hurt you. You've got more scars than me, baby. For Amer, for you, for us, we have to live and keep singing. Be as strong as they say we're not, because you're as strong as you're beautiful, when you sing."

"…Carole. I'm sorry. I was a coward, I almost held you back from our destiny…you've walked such a terrible path to this, but I was the one who was scared. No more. Let's change Vers itself with the power of music!"

If Countess Simmons had sent her away, Carole knew, both she and Tuesday, more importantly, would have been safe. Roddy could have taken care of her love, it would have been the responsible, rational course, and she had even wished for it…but no more. The danger of singing truth to Vers would tie them together at the stake, but when she saw those blue eyes shine, there was no choice.

They gave Roddy the tape. They stayed with the redhead _wunderkind_, as he cleaned up the noise and acoustics on a burner tablet; another new word. Even the fear felt perversely new and exciting, even to Carole, as she squeezed Tuesday's hand. Tuesday dared to give Roddy a kiss on the cheek, and Carole rewarded her courage with a big proper kiss before they collapsed into their bed.

"Am I cheating on Roddy with you?" Tuesday murmured, before she slipped off, "Or cheating on you with him…?"

"Bigger thing to worry about, lovergirl. Just hold me now."

-0-

_I was born in the dust, yeah, in a broken hab,_

_Oh, and just like the dome, I've been breaking ever since._

_It's been a long time, a long time coming,_

_But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will._

_It's been too hard living, but I'm too young to die,_

_Only see my blue home shining up in the sky._

_It's been a long, a long time coming,_

_But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will._

_They say we're all different, but know we're the same,_

_We need something new, for all our pain,_

_It's been a long, a long time coming,_

_But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will._

_There have been times that I thought I couldn't last for long,_

_But hold me now and I'll carry on._

_It's been a long, a long time coming,_

_But I know a change is gonna come, oh yes it will._

Carole and Tuesday's songs did change Vers, in their way. Workmen snatched a secret playthrough between endless repair shifts and pitiful meals, or even dazedly heard the milder songs played at the obscurest social hubs, as they slumped down over krill-flavoured spirits at day's end. Burly drivers set their comms on repeat, in the shaking cabs of their huge-wheeled ice haulers, under the tawny open sky. The Emperor's speeches, and many more on his behalf from the Counts, had pushed Vers into fanaticism through inescapable iron-fist assurance. But a single verse of song could make emotion dance by itself, natural and unmistakable, in the hoariest ice-freighter's heart.

Songs were rare as rubies; rare as truth. Vers had been starved for music, art or culture of any kind, even as the Counts touted their their advanced nation as the very greatest. Hunger even trumped fear. 'The Two Voices' had reached the most starved and sand-blasted farm within weeks–and they listened. Women quietly hummed the choruses between shifts at the malodourous plankton farms, stopping when a patrol passed by. Bored young soldiers wondered how beautiful the two voices were in the flesh, and whether change might not be so very bad.

But songs were dreams, in the end. Secret Security and endless toil were very much real. The Counts' promised war with Terra meant change; food on the table and soil on the ground. The big lie was daily reality; real unchanging hope and real unchanging toil. Or workers impatient for change got angry and careless; the soldiers beat them or shot them down, and the red planet rolled on in its orbit.

It would have meant something if the Voices had put out a music video like poor Amer. A noble and a Terran girl as partners on stage–it would have struck at the heart of the Versian feudal apparatus that rested on undying enmity to the Terran parasites. But it would have brought Security down on Castle Simmons in short order. Tuesday couldn't run or hide and wouldn't hear of performing without Carole.

She sank into depression at times about holding her partner back. Sometimes Carole couldn't hold back her frustration with Tuesday's low self-worth, and fights ensured that hung between them for days. On other days Tuesday simply couldn't bear to write more lyrics about sorrowful things–but Carole never tired. Tuesday saw why, in her dark Terran eyes, and always cudgelled her brain for sadder, more hope-filled lyrics again.

"The Third Class doesn't want to hear about the sufferings of Terrans on Vers, milady," Roddy explained to Tuesday on one of their not-really dates, "They feel that no one is starved and suffering as they. The Second Class won't hear of a common interest with grubby Thirders–classic divide and rule."

"I see…but revolution is impossible anyway, while the nobles control Aldnoah. Why do you…do all this?"

"Because something has to change, someday." His smile made Tuesday blush, "Maybe not in our own lives–no, we're young, we _will_ see it. And you'll make a song for the new Vers, beautiful as the first time I heard music–_your_ music, milady…"

Tuesday's heart only ached after Roddy more, as they talked, and she had finally translated his worshipful looks–but he never reached out for his brilliant singer and kissed her, however hard she _felt_ at him. Probably they both knew their situation could suddenly fling them apart–and the fearful leap of boys, deflowerment, children, _marriage_ truly was too big for the noble girl to make so soon.

But her love for her partner, Carole, was more like a beautiful friendship than something that could ever scare her. They made songs and fulfilled each other, they talked all evening and never ran out of questions. They trusted each other to touch their scars gently, and they made love to each other when they were lonely and desperate.

"…couldn't ever write a song about this…"Carole murmured, from the glow of the first climax she'd ever felt, "…but I don't mind. Hey, I should be serving you, Lady Tuesday Simmons. Come here right now and let me do you again."

"Ah! Just lie down, let me rub your back. Just rest and enjoy me, a pure daughter of Vers–!"

They tangled the sheets as they wrestled together. Carole's slim, deft fingers made Tuesday shriek, and she got a love bite on her shoulder, where her dress would cover it up. Finally, she lay on her partner's scarred brown back, and Carole consented to stay still with her for five minutes.

"Am I…getting a bit better at this, Carole? In all Vers, at least I want to make _you _happy…?"

"It isn't you, love…I'm just too tense. Wound up since forever. Changing Vers one song at a time, I've even been pushing you too hard…I'm sorry Tues. It's _us_ that matters, more than even the music. I won't forget that."

Tuesday pressed her lips against Carole's scarred back. Carole squeezed her partner's shoulder until all the worries were gone. Tomorrow, Tuesday would join her mother for another troop inspection, and Carole would wait for her alone. Someday soon, something would change.

-0-

Roddy had arranged with Goldman, and his Resistance contact in the palace, to make sure send the recording of 'Find my way home' went to the princess directly. On reading that Princess Asseylum Vers Allusia had requested for Lady Tuesday Simmons and her dear Terran friend to play a few songs of their own composition at her forthcoming eighteenth birthday party–Countess Simmons looked mildly stunned. Baron Spencer barely managed to catch Tuesday herself before she hit the deckplates.

It was an unprecedented request–all previous royal events had been more speeches and ceremonies, with the odd military choir. They couldn't immediately decide if it was a tremendous honour or a fatal disgrace; it was certainly more recognition than their most-minor-of-minor clans had received for anything. The Countess did call into Tuesday's ear, as her daughter lay gibbering with shock under a bag of ice, that she had to swear by the light of Aldnoah to say nothing against Vers, or in favour of Terra, whatsoever. That kind of _faux pas_ really would get them all sent to the ice mines, nobles no more.

Tuesday promised, as soon as she recovered–which was far quicker than her mother had expected. All she wanted was to see the hologram letter from the princess, and hungrily kiss every word that her idol's fingers had typed. Her brother smiled indulgently and wonderingly, at what his errant sister felt more passion for than he himself had felt for anything since coming of age.

When Tuesday ran to her room and babbled the news to Carole, the Terran girl's face looked much like Countess Simmons'. She didn't know what this meant, except that nothing would be the same.

"…say that again. Nothing against Vers or for Terra? You swore by Aldnoah?"

"The _light_ of Aldnoah. It's even more serious than swearing by the Emperor, or the _princess_–!"

Tuesday almost fainted again with fearful excitement, until she saw Carole's hands on her hips, and really knew fear.

"Tues, after all we've been through…are you asking me to sing about what a wonderful place Vers is, in front of the thirty-seven assholes who run the show? For your _mother_, after the way she treated you? Absolutely not!"

"She is my mother, Carole, and Vers is my country. Not a home, nothing it should be, but it's the planet we live on, and we can't change that. We could never have written a fierce and angry song like poor Amer anyway..."

"Who says we can't try? For Amer's sake we _have_ to try! A song to wipe their smiles off and make them afraid! All our anger, all our need, everything we've all suffered, Tues…if it a song that they kill me for singing, then I'd know we'd done something–!"

"Please, Carole, never say again that you're going to die! We used to sing from our hearts and our lives, for love and understanding. I know Vers needed different songs, but I need you…I need us. We need a song about peace and hope."

"There is no peace on Vers, no hope! Only for spoilt, stupid–!"

Carole scarcely managed to bite down on her tongue. Tuesday was almost in tears and Carole felt like weeping herself over what she'd almost said. The two girls stared into bitter eyes, not knowing how to fight or how to forgive.

"Oh, Tues, I'm sorry." Carole's voice finally came, "How could we ever sing if it wasn't us, from our own hearts? How was I so dumb that I forgot that? I got angry, caught up in changing Vers, but I looked away from you–when it was you who saved me! I'm sorry."

Tuesday spread her arms. They held each other for as long as it took to come home.

"It was hard for you, Carole. You even lost your friend…but I promise, I won't part from you, no matter what anyone says."

"We good, babe?"

"Yes! We're good…" Tuesday giggled at the unaccustomed phrase; Carole rocked them back and forth, "Except…what are we going to sing for Princess Asseylum?"

"A song about us, Tues, our hearts. That's all we've got to sing about…it's the most powerful thing we've got."

After that, came the tough bit. Singing any of their illegally released and subversive songs would have been extremely foolish–and Tuesday, especially, wanted to write something better than all of them. With typical Versian feudal disorganisation, the invitation had been sent a week before the birthday ceremony. After seventy-two hours of wrong note breakdowns and staring at a blank tablet, Tuesday almost felt like breaking her guitar in half.

She had to take a deep breath and remember even what a guitar was. A wooden body, a long neck. Six strings, six keys, a heart of vibrating air. It had travelled from Earth to the Moon to Mars, through oppression and war. She knew every scratch, but she had to feel them all over again.

"'This machine kills fascists.'" Carole muttered, staring at her keyboard from a distance of inches.

"What does that mean?"

"Not sure. Mother said that once or twice, when she held it. Hey, do you think they'll have a grand piano in the palace?" Tuesday didn't think so, "Oh well. I'll have to do my best with this old thing."

The piece of wood, air and tension in Tuesday's arms translated her effort and her feelings into something called music. A frail, imperfect message, a still small voice. That might struggle its way to the heart of a Countess or a labourer, as it glowed between a Terran and a noble girl.

Without looking at Carole, she could feel her working at a time change they might never use. She smiled–then felt Carole's arms on her shoulders. They ended up falling asleep as soon as they touched the bed.

After a long rest, and three more days, they had something. Carole told Tuesday her Princess would love it, and her mother would _hear_ it–it wasn't a perfect song, but it was 0100 hours and tomorrow was already today.

"Well…let's do our best! They say every beaver has their day!"

Carole was sure it wasn't a beaver, but she'd never seen a beaver or a dog. She smiled with her head on one side, and squeezed Tuesday's hand as they went out to the car.


	5. Chapter 5

"Count Saazbaum. Count Cruhteo. Dear Rafia, how wonderful to see you once more! My _dear_ Countess Rastapodopolis…"

Staring through the crack of a steel sliding door, Carole and Tuesday stared at Asseylum Vers Allusia, Crown Princess of the Holy Vers Empire. Gladhanding through the counts, viscounts and prominent barons who had gathered to wish her a felicitous seventeenth birthday. Her hair shone like Terran sunlight, her silk-sheathed body was slim and awesome as the crescent of Phobos. The royal smile was quiet, close-mouthed and heartstopping. She was every inch a princess.

Tuesday had been writing devotional poems to her idol since she'd been eight. Her fingers quivered and her mouth flapped open and shut.

"Isn't she just…_perfect?_"

"Hm? Oh yeah, that's her problem." Carole muttered, "If she tries to steal you off me, I'm really gonna snatch her wig."

"CAROLE! Don't you dare, how could you…! We're going to sing in front of the Emperor, the Princess, all of Vers! We have to be perfect, but I'm shaking to pieces, and _you're saying crazy things like that_…!"

"Yeah. And doing things like this."

As Tuesday weakly beat on her partner's chest, Carole held her and drew her close. She rested her forehead against Tuesday's pale brow, until their harsh breaths slowed together. Hearts hammering, on the threshold of their lifetimes' performance, they shared a deep kiss. Every sensation was magnified a thousandfold.

"Carole…" Tuesday gasped, "…I think I'm in love with you."

She stilled her mouth as Carole reapplied her smudged lipstick for her, and un-dishevelled their simple white gowns. The Terran girl kept smiling at her, eyes bright. Joy suited her so much more than sorrow and rage.

"You look amazing, Tues. When you sing, when you just go for it…you look magical. I love it, I mean, I love you! Argh, let's save the confessions for the afterparty!"

An hour until curtainup. The girls broke apart, turned to their instruments. Taunt with nerves, Tuesday held her Hummingbird to her body like a rifle. Keyboard slung over her shoulder, Carole's fingers weaved out notes in air. With only a handful of sideways glances, they ran over their song in silence, in the vanishing time they had left.

-0-

Thirty-two out of thirty-seven Orbital Knights were naturally projecting holographic personas from their Castles in Earth orbit, _via_ the FTL communication capabilities of blessed Aldnoah. But all thirty-seven faces had assembled at the great hall of the Imperial palace, in red-coated ranks.

The knights of Aldnoah. The overlords of Vers. Carole felt like Anne Frank, facing the unrepentant dock at Nuremberg.

There was Count Saazbaum; his weathered face had twinkling with an uncle's charm, as he kissed his princess' hand. Count Cruhteo, his handsome face fixed like marble by vicious devotion. Count Selkinas, haughty even in obeisance; Countess Femieanne, smiling and self-contented. Countess Simmons, Tuesday's mother, smiling and nodding; Count Ertegan checking his hair in a mirror. Count Orga, huge and silent. Countess Rafia, the Princess's childhood friend and martial arts tutor, pumping her slim hand up and down–smiling, as she evaded Count Zebrin's gaze.

All of them, Carole knew, would happily watch as she were flogged to death and then congratulate each other on such a noble act (Count Mazuurek wouldn't have, and one or two others, but they wouldn't have voiced any objection). She didn't know how many ten-millions of Terrans the assembled Counts would have killed with their giant kataphrakts and Landing Castles, before another year was out. But she felt the ghosts at the feast; she trembled with terror and fury.

The prevailing mood of the crowd was officious boredom. Something spectacular had been planned for the Crown Princess' _next_, eighteenth, birthday. The present event had been extended and tedious as any of the endless ceremonials that devoutly masked the fact–there was simply nothing to do on Mars. No art, no crops; an empire of dirt. Princess Asseylum had been on her feet for hours, telling the same people she greeted at every function how delighted to see them she was, even the ones who were conspiring to make her a puppet. She still smiled with real brightness, because that was what a princess did.

Only Tuesday was wide-eyed and overawed by the high, vaulted hall. The beds of Terran soil and grass behind the throne, more precious than fields of emeralds on Mars. The aged Emperor Rayregalia, father of all Vers, high and robed on his seat, filled her with holy awe. The princess was more beautiful than she'd dreamed of, of course…but it was Carole, her beloved Terran, stood in the palace of Vers before the Imperial Knights, that fluttered her heart with hope amid the roaring fear.

Some confident young baronesses had already read out praise poems they'd composed for the princesses–Tuesday thought a few of them had seeds of decency, but they were slaved to conventional platitudes. Eddelrittuo, the princess's tiny handmaid, stammered through a poem that was more of the same, but truly heartfelt. It didn't diverge into praise of Asseylum's father, martyred while leading the first invasion of Terra, who remained a great deal more idolised than Asseylum by more _Versian_ young ladies and men than Tuesday. The Counts were all looking forward to getting on with some productive oppression, when Asseylum's voice arrested their attention for the first time that day.

"My royal grandfather. My loyal and gallant Orbital Knights. The entertainments will conclude with a musical performance by Lady Tuesday Simmons and her Terran maidservant. They will be playing songs of their own composition–" The Versian princess misremembered the names of instruments she'd never seen, "–on the keytar and pianoforte."

-0-

Saazbaum, of course, had known what was planned. Cruhteo would've known, and put a stop to it, if Sergeant Goldman's Resistance friends hadn't got the report lost. The Count unleashed a silent glare of outrage like a blue laser. The thirty-five other Orbital Knights, their noble minions, and Tuesday's mother (As a junior baron, Spencer was with Roddy, watching his sister from Alba City on holovision. Sargeant Gus Goldman was on guard at the back of the hall), turned a collective gaze on the stage where Carole and Tuesday stood, mixing irritation and distain in equal parts.

"…we're…Carole and Tuesday, your highnesses, my lords–"

A storm of muttering already–she'd billed the Terran's name before her own. Tuesday dug her nails into her palms, took the deepest breath.

"–_please_, listen to our song!"

Near silence. Mild amusement, at her terrified state. Tuesday gazed into Carole's eyes. The Terran girl smiled back through her own storm of dark emotions; nodded. The girls turned back to the hall, as Tuesday met her mother's eye from the stage, and spoke on.

"Sometimes it is hard to bear the title of noble, with its duties…I'm sure it must be a far greater burden for her highness, to be such a glorious princess. These are our feelings, that brought light to our lives…the song we wrote together."

In the horrified silence, Carole's fingers slowly came down on the keys.

_You were looking from your tower_

_Hoping you would disappear_

_You were singing to yourself, mmm, mmm._

_You were looking from your tower_

_You were singing by yourself_

_And the tears came pouring down from those sad eyes_

_Until I heard you sing the song_

_Oh yeah, I heard you,_

_So, I sang along…_

_Then one day_

_I found the courage_

_To come over and say;_

_Ba Ba, Ba Ba_

_La La La_

_Ba-dup_

_Ba Ba, Ba Ba_

_La La La._

_You were looking from your tower_

_Singing songs of birds and blue._

_Nobody ever heard you but,_

_The few who dream of peace._

_And then a wind came blowing around,_

_And an echo it swallowed your song,_

_And sent it over the city to my hab._

_Then I knew_

_You were the one_

_My princess,_

_True song of my heart_

_Ba Ba, Ba Ba,_

_La La La,_

_Ba-dup_

_Ba Ba, Ba Ba_

_La La La_

_Ohhh, whispering…my love._

"_Ba, ba, ba, la, la?_" Countess Rafia hissed to Count Zebrin (An outsider among the other nobles, owing to his unmartial reputation for intellect), "Is that some tribal chant from whatever jungle they dragged that black girl out of?"

"I think it expresses the idea…that love itself is inexpressible in words, Countess."

Rafia could only nod. Count and Countess desperately avoided each other's eyes, fidgeting like teenagers on a first date.

"This is an insult to the Orbital Knights and the Imperial family!" Cruhteo's powerful voice rang out, "To suggest that nobility could be a burden, that the royal blood of Vers could ever know weakness–!"

"It is not true strength to conquer any weakness, Count Cruhteo? My strength is that of Vers itself, from the silent love of my people that these young girls have so beautifully expressed! Truly, it is the fate of royals and artists to have their intentions cavilled at and misunderstood!"

Tears shone in Princess Asseylum's eyes, just as the song had described. Mastering her emotions with royal self-control, her green eyes met Cruhteo's sullen glare.

"I thought it was pleasant enough." Emperor Rayregalia murmured. Carole had thought the old coot was asleep, but his divine voice instantly silenced the hall. Carole's heartrate and Tuesday's began to drop from a gallop, and the frightening rictus of Countess Simmons' face slightly relaxed.

"Dear Tuesday, and Carole," Asseylum turned a megawatt smile on them, "Please continue!"

The girls would rather have got out while the going was good, but they could hardly say no–and it was already too late. Count Cruhteo was inclining his ear to a nondescript aide with a datatablet, who had quickly matched their voices to the seditious, disparaging and unauthorised song recordings that had been circulating around Vers in previous months.

"…no doubt? Though it would hardly matter if there were. Arrest them both as soon as they leave the palace. I will oversee their interrogation. There is no need for the princess to know anything, and Countess Simmons will be no obstacle. From now on, at least."

The girls couldn't hear the words, but they could foresee what would happen to them both, as soon as their song was over. There was nothing for it, but to share their strength in one gaze and put their hearts into their swansong.

"…I must apologise that our final song is quite a personal one," Tuesday got out the words; she needed another deep breath to finish, "But we believe it's about something dear to our princess's heart. Something all people need, Versian or Terran, and might hear of with joy."

With a smile she had fought for, Carole pressed down on her keyboard again. Tuesday plucked out the first notes, spun around to face her partner with a grin, and sung without even a thought of fear.

_We've been around the sun,_

_Hand in hand through desert storms._

_Into a brand-new dawn,_

_Burning our bridges with the past._

_'Cause this is the moment we've waited for_

_And this is the day we spread our wings and fly._

_Nothing can break this army of two,_

_Ain't nothing gonna stop us, girl, it's you, you, you and I!_

_And where you lead, Sister, I will follow_

_From the shadows of the past,_

_To the shimmers of tomorrow._

_For the bond we share,_

_It's beyond compare,_

_It's unbreakable… _

Carole smiled at the girl who had saved her for love and joy. Sweat and tears blurred Tuesday's eyes, as they clung to the love she'd found, and her fingers danced over the chords. A palace aide had cut off their microphones one line into the chorus–so they were really having to belt out the words that had frozen the grim-faced nobility in their seats.

Even if they couldn't sing here about drudgery, torture and xenophobia–every hateful thing on Vers that had to change–love was all they'd ever wanted to sing about, and it was a blasphemous explosion in the empire's heart. The nobles saw, as any of them with eyes had seen in the first song, a Versian daughter of the thirty-seven clans pouring her voice, love and honour out for a street-rat Terran monkey. The smiles of love between Carole and Tuesday struck traumatically at every principle of inequality and separation they'd devoted their lives to. Some more astute nobles perceived that the girls were lovers, and very nearly shot them dead on the stage.

But even Cruhteo didn't draw a weapon or even try to shout them down. From decorum, from disbelief, or in the face of a greater force than kataphrakts. There was even silence as they slowed for a key change. Princess Asseylum had ordered the aide to reconnect them, as Carole finally let her voice be heard.

_"YO! Momma was a soldier, and her home was blue,_

_Your world is red, but our blood is too._

_She built your dome, she died one day,_

_Just my Vers soul sister there to show me the way!_

_Showed me my chains of misery,_

_Too late for too many, but I now am free._

_Black or white, red or blue,_

_We need each other, this much is true!_

_'Cos mercy and peace are O-VER-DUE!"_

That actually got a smile from Count Saazbaum, albeit one venomous enough to etch steel. But Carole and Tuesday were singing from a different Mars, together, and saw nothing now but the world of their song. For Amer, for both their mothers, for Spencer, Roddy and each other, Carole ran her hand down the keyboard to make it cry out, and Tuesday strummed her way into the last chorus.

_United, we are blessed,_

_We're never alone when hard times hit._

_Every taste of success,_

_Is sweeter with someone to share it with._

_And where you lead, Sister, I will follow._

_From the shadows of the past,_

_To the shimmers of tomorrow._

_For the bond we share_

_Is beyond compare,_

_It's unbreakable!_

_This is the moment we waited for_

_The day we spread our wings and fly_

_Nothing can break this army of two_

_Ain't nothing gonna stop us, girl, it's you, you, you and I!_

-0-

Before the echoes of their final note had faded, the reaction was rumbling around the hall, with cries of 'sedition', 'treachery' and 'disgrace'. Countess Simmons hadn't yet stood up to say that Tuesday was no daughter of hers–but when she moved a muscle, she would. Panting and sweating, the girls faced all of the furious eyes; the gazes with power to destroy them completely. As soon as Princess Asseylum spoke in their defence, Count Saazbaum would paint her as disloyal and unworthy–not directly, in front of her grandfather, but insinuation could turn gold to dirt. That had been his plan all along, and the only reason he'd permitted this vile display.

When Count Selkinas called Tuesday a miscegenating whore, she burst into tears and hid them in Carole's chest. The Terran girl shielded her partner, with slim arms and a strong warrior's eyes. In moments, the dogs of war would slip and hell would break loose–

"Your majesty! _Grandfather._" Asseylum's white frock spread over the floor, as she knelt before Rayregalia's throne, "For the hope of peace we share–for my birthday's sake!–can the punishment of these brave girls not be diluted with mercy?"

The aged Emperor was silent for a time. So was Saazbaum, teeth clenched behind unmoving lips.

"Mercy…" Rayregalia's voice was unnaturally clear, "…is no part of science or Empire, my dear girl. Solid, material facts determine that we must work by degrees towards closer relations with Terra, to prevent another ruinous war. The song of these girls was well meant, but ill-timed and ill-placed–for the unity and stability that are the strength of Vers, some things are better unspoken. I hereby forbid both these girls form performing again in public and will leave further discipline to Countess Simmons."

"Could I not take them into my own service, grandfather? That they might teach me of Terra, and…the bonds between us?"

"Certainly, Asseylum. One day, the light of Aldnoah will shine through you to the solar system, bringing understanding and prosperity to all, as its purpose has always been. That day will come…when all your knights follow to path you lead in, with sincere loyalty and faith."

Saazbaum was first of the thirty-seven Knights to kneel. The day had brought nothing but discredit to Vers' peace-loving princess (Though her appeal to her grandfather had been more astute than he'd expected), so he was well content with it. The other knights knelt; mercifully those like Cruhteo that most hated Terrans most worshipped the royal blood of Aldnoah.

Carole and Tuesday knelt too–Carole, hearing the supreme Versian leader speak for peace with Earth, knelt very sincerely.

"Be grateful, Countess Simmons," Rayregalia pronounced, "To have a daughter in the Crown Princess's service is a high honour."

Afterward, Countess Valerie Simmons knelt to Tuesday and said she was sorry for everything–and for staying silent while her own daughter was called a whore, for her honour's sake. Tuesday silently, tearfully embraced her.

Carole got stuck talking with the hologram of a charming young Count from Earth Orbit, Mazuurek by name, who wanted to know more about Jazz music–apparently hippie-hopping had always intrigued him as well. If he was slightly hitting on her, he wasn't blatant about it, so Carole smiled and made up some rubbish for him about Terran music.

"Fascinating. Your Terran culture, for all its flaws, has such vitality, warmth, even insight..." Carole suggested that Mazuurek could have learned about it, and a great deal more, by visiting her friends in the slums, "...ah! You mustn't think that the power of Aldnoah lets us do whatever we wish. I'm risking my own position even by speaking with you here, you understand. Ahem, still...if you ever have need of a patron, do ask of me as much help as I can give."

Carole smiled tightly, and assured Mazuurek that she already had the best woman on Vers for her saviour. She let the count assume she was talking about the princess.

-0-

The girls quickly realised why Vers was heading for the second war with Terra that the Orbital Knights desired, when both members of the royal family wanted peace. Their principal duty as palace servants was to play their happy and hopeful songs at the Emperor's bedside, at the times when his dementia took hold. The figure on the throne was another hologram; the strong, clear voice converted electronically from a dry wheeze. Saazbaum pleasantly mentioned that only the most senior counts and palace functionaries knew the true state of affairs, and the girls would be killed if even a chance of their revealing it was feared. They never left the palace for the rest of their time on Mars; Tuesday didn't see her mother, or Roddy, again, for many years.

'Whispering my Love', 'Soldier' or 'A Change is Gonna Come', never failed to grant Rayregalia's wrinkled lips a smile. Tuesday held his hand for hours and recited his own old speeches to him, whenever Princess Asseylum had a minor state function or simply needed a rest. The Emperor called her by his dead wife's name, as he did Asseylum. Sometimes he raged weakly at Carole for killing his son in the war.

Most of his days were lucid; even bedridden, he was still an enthralling speaker and storyteller, monumentally knowledgeable in science and politics. He spoke movingly of what he had hoped to achieve for all mankind, through the miraculous super-science of Aldnoah, and his million regrets–even if he insisted that every decision he had made had been the correct one. Tuesday was devoted to her true Emperor wholeheartedly. By any objective judgement, Carole reckoned, he was a selfish hypocrite whose real madness had began as soon as Aldnoah touched him–but she was sincerely inclined to show him the mercy that heaven had shown to her.

Ironically and inevitably, Princess Asseylum was much more interested in Carole than her biggest fan, Tuesday. The noble girl sulked and gave Carole the cold shoulder because of it; the Princess was too charming for her to possibly take against. Though Carole had never set foot on Earth, Asseylum chatted to her new Terran friend for hours over tea and scones, about the birds, bees and beavers her Terran tutor had told _her_ about.

Carole had been hoping to meet Slaine Troyard; the Princess's Terran companion who'd inspired Tuesday to save _her_, in what felt like another lifetime. But it seemed he'd been packed off to Earth orbit as a soldier-servant years ago, before he was old enough to become a source of scandal. Staying shut in her room all day, as Tuesday had done before she'd met Carole, hadn't helped her to keep up with palace news.

In two years, Troyard hadn't replied to Princess Asseylum's messages; she often sighed to Carole over the boundaries between them. Carole could guess, and was fairly certain Asseylum knew, that her kind, pale soldier boy was effectively a captive slave. Beaten daily for his planet of birth, by soldiers in the same uniform he'd been forced to wear.

Asseylum learned to play the keyboard with effortless perfection. She was absolutely the perfect princess. She would marry her grandfather's choice of noble at eighteen, a spotless virgin, and ensure the succession before her twentieth birthday; it was her duty. She would not even dream of relieving her dear Terran boy's suffering, it was politically impossible–even if the feelings locked in her heart were so earnest and lovely that Carole could almost forgive their futility. Of course, peace between Terra and the Knights was more important than one boy, or even the downtrodden millions of Vers; Asseylum said it with such pure and heartfelt conviction that Carole could almost have fawned on her hand, for what her princess deigned to give. She could have lived for the unearthly beauty of Asseylum's smile, as her devoted little puppy of a maid, Eddelrittuo did. As Slaine Troyard had done, as Tuesday always had...

-0-

"Tues, do you love me?"

"Carole...yes! I don't have much, I'm useless, but all I have is yours..."

"You're worth a hundred Aldnoah princesses; always said it, always will. Oh, Tues...!"

She pushed the blonde girl onto their bed, and made love to her with unyielding fierceness. It scared them both as they clung together. The cold world that had always threatened to drag them apart, the passion that might tie them together. Hearts feeding off each other, desperate but gentle. Making their own kind of music.

"...wasn't I right about the Princess, though, darling?" Tuesday murmured, kissing over Carole's thigh, "Didn't you fall in love with her a little?"

"I'd worship her, if she were a singer. But I'll never be good with two planets in the hands of a rich girl in crinolines. She's the same age as us! No human should be worshipped like a goddess, for their own sake as well."

"...I suppose I understand. But still, if the Orbital Knights didn't regard the imperial command as the voice of god, they would have invaded Earth long ago."

"Credit due, then. The royal family _almost_ solved the problem they created themselves. I kind of feel sorry for them-but not like I'm torn up for Amer, or mother, or you, Tues."

The palace staff, especially little Eddelrittuo (The youngest daughter of a much more highly ranked Clan than Simmons), treated the girls with open disdain. It had been much the same in Castle Simmons, though. The palace was far bigger, with ceilings lost in shadow and endless chambers (And a_ swimming pool_, wonder of extravagant wonders, on a planet where the Third-Class had water rations) but essentially more of the same. They had a tower bedroom, where they'd searched for bugs, found none, and finally pushed the two beds together to make one. If they died for it, they died.

They were still forbidden to play music in public. Roddy had pulled their recordings from the Versian dark net, to avoid more trouble (though their fans still treasured their songs, in secret and offline, in spite of all threats). His Resistance friends were biding their time and staying hidden. All in all, their time in the palace was a silent wilderness of futility.

-0-

"…we should have played a real protest song."

"I should have called Selkanis a frog-faced dumbhead."

"Oh, baby…come here."

Tuesday snuggled against Carole, in the tower room they shared. Hummingbird, and Carole's keyboard, rested together near the wall.

"I'm sorry about me and the Princess, Tues..."

"No, no, I'm sorry, I was so stupid to be jealous. So long as you both didn't…?"

"Oh no, she's straight as a ruler. She is a real beauty…but all for men to marry, and dutify, and look at their barbie doll princess. No, if I cheat on you, it's going to be with a cool guy."

"CAROLE!"

"Hey, you like guys too! But I just love, love, _you, _Tues…"

Carole led Tuesday by her hand to bed. They pulled off the long black servant's dresses they both thought _so_ dreary. Carole kissed upwards from her girl's little breasts to her chin. Gathering handfuls of bright blonde hair as it fell from Tuesday's flung-back head. Their bodies slid, gasped and pressed together, their frolicking was tender and very sweet–but then it was over, and nothing had changed.

"We need to keep writing." Carole muttered into the pillow, "About…anything. Let's just play some songs round the palace, for ourselves…?"

"If some of the servants stop and listen, we'll have violated the Emperor's command. You know somebody will make sure he hears about it, on one of his bad days."

(And it would be whispered about, at peril of their lives, if they kissed, clasped hands or hinted at all that they were lovers, under the eyes of the palace. It had been the same in Castle Simmons–an everyday trouble of an interracial couple in a fascist state. But when you needed a touch and gentle look, just to get through another miserable hour, and it didn't come–because it wasn't safe? Or wasn't she feeling it? Or were her thoughts fixed on an enthrallingly beautiful blonde princess…? There was a strain)

"The servants wouldn't listen to our songs anyway."

"You never know. The power of music can change the world."

"Hmm. Tues? Why were you talking to that count with greasy hair the other day?"

"Oh, Count Zebrin? He requested my help with some, um, personal poems. And it isn't grease, it's pomade."

"Huh. Just remember I'll always be here for you, Tues. If you need someone else, I really do understand. But even if I could leave you, I never, never would."

The pain and truth in Carole's voice stabbed at Tuesday, but she still clung to her partner's back. A bitter embrace. It would've been better if they'd could've screamed at each other for five minutes, sometimes, and made up with angry sex-but neither of them dared, in case something broke and they were alone. It was another strain.

Sincere words were empty, when they had never held the mastery of their own lives, and their music had been confined at His Majesty's Pleasure. Imprisoned in their own hearts, to beat on the walls, claw its own arms, and scream every day without sound.


	6. Chapter 6

**Four Months Later**

"…the _Selene's_ Aldnoah drive will carry us through space at 80,000 kilometres per hour. A small replicator will supply our food and drink–we will only lack a library and a swimming pool! It seems like a great white bird, does it not? A bird to carry us over the sea of stars, to old Earth."

Princess Asseylum treated Carole and Tuesday to a smile they would always remember. The wings of _Selene_, the royal spaceship, swept through the hanger's tremendous spotlit darkness above them. Carole knew little jokes and surprising factoids were what royals did to pretend they were normal humans, but she was still mightily impressed. Tuesday and Eddelrittuo, the little handmaid, wore near-identical expressions of awe.

"Oh, your highness!" Tuesday gushed, "A goodwill visit to Earth! For peace, understanding and trade! How wonderful, you've wanted this for so long…"

"Indeed, to gaze on the wonders of Earth has long been my dream," The princess closed her brilliant green eyes, under the weight of her joy, "Even a delay would have ruined my hopes, as the orbit of Earth carried her further away–without the tireless aid of Count Saazbaum, I confess, I might never have gained the consent of both Count Crutheo and grandfather. He will miss you, but I thought it best to add you both to my entourage quietly, Carole and Tuesday, with no chance for any objections. We will gaze on the wonders of Earth together."

The girls collapsed into each other's arms–Carole was about as close to fainting with shock and joy as Tuesday. They knelt at Asseylum's feet, would have happily kissed her pretty white slippers, for the undreamt on gift she had found reason to bestow.

"…we'll see beavers! And elephants!" Tuesday burbled, "Rain and snow and so much, so many songs! Thank you, highness, thank you!"

"Well, perhaps you might share some of those songs with me, throughout our journey?" Asseylum stroked both girl's heads, their breaths quickened, "On this mission of peace, the wonderful bond you bear between Vers and Terra will inspire me with hope. We will have time among the stars to truly become friends–Carole and Tuesday, and Asseylum!"

Eddelrittuo sidled up to Carole (As the princess gazed soulfully towards a viewing window, and Tuesday mooned over the princess), with a vicious look in her eye.

"You should remember your place, Terra-girl. I've been training in martial arts since I was three, if you try to take advantage of her highness, or behave improperly–"

"Oh, can it, short-stuff. We're going to Earth. My mother's place."

Carole's tearful grin was invulnerable. The handmaid's glare was marred by a little doubt, even before Asseylum turned around, and Eddelrittuo beamed with smiles.

-0-

It turned out that Asseylum really didn't want a threesome with Carole and Tuesday; she walked in on them eating out in the shower a couple of times, in the month-long space voyage, but left without a word. More than even a handsome prince or quiet, devoted Terran boy to uselessly dream on, what they found that Asseylum truly desired was their friendship. Burdening with a glory that obscured her human self–an icon of pure femininity, packaged for a world of powerful men–friendship with other girls, as a girl, was what Asseylum desired most of all. As far as a perfect princess could desire anything, except what Vers demanded.

In endless tea parties aboard the _Selene_–speeding through endless interplanetary night, with garden furniture set up on steel deckplates–Asseylum shared all of her hopes and dreams with the girls and charmed them into happily sharing all of theirs. Merely being able to speak of peace without fear, to a royal of Vers, was exhilarating. For a girl who'd bore a world's destiny round her neck to say that their song had truly relieved her heart was precious. Asseylum gave Carole and Tuesday all of herself that she could give.

"…with all my heart, I feel that if we can simply speak to each other, understand our problems and set aside our differences–with faith and hard work, peace must be possible! Sometimes I almost despair…truly, I'm just a young girl, like you. Still, I know that if I keep faith, then all Vers will see the goodness of Earth, as I do, and put away their hate!"

"They will, princess." Tuesday clasped her hands, "If you believe in your own heart, and don't let politics mess it all up again, but do what is right…no one could do it but you."

"If Terra feeds Vers, and Vers puts all the guns down, maybe there will be peace." Carole leaned back, "We will do everything we can for your dream, your highness–it's a bigger dream than we've got, playing our songs to all the world. Only, there's no good reason at all why we shouldn't be doing that right now."

Asseylum sadly shook her head. She wasn't all Vers in one person, and she wasn't just an ordinary girl. She truly believed that Mars would be ready for songs of change one day–but until then she caged up their music in her private spaceship, for herself, just like her grandfather. Carole and Tuesday admired her, loved her, would have died for her dream of peace…but Carole and Tuesday and Asseylum would simply have crushed them.

Eddelrittuo didn't have a lot of conversation, and Asseylum's bodyguards all particularly hated Terrans. But between daily command performances of 'Whispering my Love' and 'Army of Two' for their princess, they had a universe to see.

On the _Selene's_ viewing deck, sitting back to back with the decklights out, Tuesday strummed and sang softly. As Carole sounded the occasional note on her keyboard, wide-eyed before the field of stars. Undimmed by dust clouds, massed like towering diamonds against the peaceful night.

After so long beneath the same red skies, bitter domes and Castle walls, they were finally looking on something new; the universe beyond Vers. They could sing like birds in a cage, because a change was coming.

-0-

In Earth orbit, thirty-two Vers Landing Castle battleships had been circling through almost eighteen years since the last war. They had passed through the Moon Hypergate left by the ancient natives of Mars and been cut off from returning by the Hypergate's destruction. Exhorting enough food from Earth to survive, under threat of mass destruction, the Orbital Knights had been waiting for the next war with Earth ever since. Looking enviously down on a blue paradise of water, food and air, from their starving fortresses–though chunks of Earth's landmass and a third of its population had been lost to 'Heaven's Fall', the destruction of the moon. So, relations between Mars and Earth had unjust but very real grounds for mutual hatred.

Princess Asseylum would be residing at Castle Cruhteo before descending to Shinawara, Japan, for the first stage of her goodwill visit. Count Cruhteo, as fanatical in his devotion to the Imperial family as in his hatred of Terrans, greeted Asseylum with every courtesy. He was as handsome and frighteningly intense as Carole and Tuesday remembered.

The white-haired young man at the count's side, gazing upon Asseylum as if an angel had come down to him through hell, looked as sweet and sad as they had imagined. Carole could see the scars on Slaine Troyard's back, within his blue eyes. The chains of loneliness and misery.

After Princess Asseylum had renewed her acquaintance with her Terran former tutor, Carole had a chance to get him on his own. She didn't know how to say everything that was bursting in her, to the first fellow Terran she'd seen in over a year.

"Doesn't it make you mad? Being so close to Earth, and…here?"

"I have no one on Earth, Miss Stanley. Vers is my nation and my home."

"The Versians call us Terran scum–isn't your 'home' with the princess?" Slaine averted his eyes, "I just hope she does something for you, now. You'd better be joining us when we finally head down there–"

"You are mistaken. I do not desire any favour from her highness that would inconvenience her, or her dreams. I have no need to travel to Earth; I have no need of anything, now."

_Now she is here_, rang out in the silence. Carole couldn't get it over that he had to take care of himself, like she'd done before Tuesday came–not grind his heart down to nothing but the love of his princess. Slaine Troyard might have captured her heart with his purity, she thought as she stalked away, if he hadn't been such a frustrating fool.

Asseylum spent the evening with Slaine, gazing down on the Earth. She said it was very beautiful, and he said it was just as she said. Carole and Tuesday, in each other's arms, gazed over the ring of drifting rocks left from the moon, and down that titanic broken highway to the white-blue circle of the Earth. Their eyes drank in everything they saw, their minds spun with the billions of people and scenes and habitats within that little, luminous globe…

As Tuesday went weak at the knees, Carole had to hold her up. There was no one beside them at the window; she tasted Tuesday's lips and tongue until she was sated.

"Carole…your home is beautiful, but I feel sad. So much down there, so little on Vers, so fragile…Carole, would you want to stay there? Even if I had to return to Vers? You wouldn't have any family, but you'd be free, safe and happy…"

"…I could tell them what they do to us on Vers, how they made us live. I…don't have a home on Vers, Tues, _we_ never will. But I couldn't be apart from you."

The next morning, Count Cruhteo informed the princess why it would be impossible for any of her Terran companions to go down to Earth with her, ever.

"The United Earth Forces slanderously claim that all Terrans on Vers are being held against their will, your highness. If Troyard or the black girl set foot on Earth, they might well not be allowed to leave. They may even be tortured into giving false, disparaging statements against Vers–"

"Or we might claim asylum!" Carole completely lost her head, "And tell them how you torture and beat us, just for playing music!"

"And leave Lady Simmons, Miss Stanley?" Asseylum sounded quietly horrified, "Leave _me_?"

Tuesday clung in silence to Carole's hand; she had decided that wherever her partner went, she would go with her. But their hands were torn apart as Cruhteo swung his cane around, into Carole's head. He would have hit her again, sprawled on the floor–but Slaine moved over her, and took the blows on his own back.

Asseylum was furious with Cruhteo, and warned him sternly, but finally accepted that his anger had been ungovernable. Slaine treated Carole's head wound himself; the sickbay had never treated _him_ for the beating he'd had from Cruhteo. Tuesday went into hysterics, clinging to Carole's hand and whimpering.

She wouldn't even go to Earth with the princess, if Carole couldn't go. When Asseylum departed for Earth–unaccompanied except by servants, bodyguards and Slaine's prayers for her success–she was quite calm, resolute and happy. Undistracted by childish things, she was going to see the wonders of Earth, and save two planets through simple faith and purity.

Tuesday couldn't have stood to remain in Castle Cruhteo, with its master–Slaine had offered to sneak an illicit radio message to another Castle. An invitation for Lady Simmons and her Terran friend soon duly arrived.

-0-

"Lady Tuesday Simmons. The muse to whom I owe so much."

Count Zebrin's pompadour flopped forward as he gave a stately bow to Tuesday. He then attempted to greet Carole with one of those 'fist-bumps' he'd vaguely heard of–she'd no idea what he was doing. Zebrin's fiancé, Countess Rafia, shook both girls by the shoulders and thumped them on the back.

When Count Zebrin had requested Tuesday's help with his personal romantic poems, via hologram, (Threatening to ruin her whole clan if she breathed a word to his rivals) she had rather got into the job and done some of her best work. The lines she'd supplied had emboldened the most bookish and careful of knights to finally confess his love for 'Amazon Rafia'. The fiery and fiercely independent unarmed combat instructor to the princess, who had secretly been dreaming since they were kids that Zebrin would grow a pair and propose.

Uniting two of the thirty-seven clans, even fairly minor clans and longstanding allies, had proved difficult as had been expected. But Rafia cheerfully assured Carole and Tuesday that love was like a Martian dust storm; if there was no way, it made a way.

"My Baroness Astarte and Lady Angela are holding down the fort at Castle Rafia. They were both hoping to be my adopted heir, if I'd never married–still could be, though, if none of our children measure up."

"Is that likely, Rafia?" Zebrin raised one eyebrow, "With my brains, and your…charms?"

Rafia laughed as she jabbed Zebrin in the ribs. She was a short, slim woman with cropped red hair, and eyes piercing as arrows as they looked over first Tuesday, then Carole.

"So, the best man or woman gets the job?" Carole quipped, "So long as they're noble?" Tuesday pawed fearful at her partner's sleeve, but Rafia merely sneered.

"Lady Angela was born into the Third Class, as it happens. I elevated her personally, because she's a worker and a blasted good fighter. Of course, no effete Terran could ever outdo a hardened child of Vers. Now, Lady Simmons, how about a few rounds of sparring? A woman of Vers should be able to defend her honour–or are you more of a tea and crumpets girl?"

"Um. Er. I haven't really…"

"I'd take you up on that sparring if you're alright with that, Countess." Carole spoke up, "Versians have been beating me up all my life–high time I learnt a few moves."

Tuesday was too stunned to protest, Zebrin urgently shook his head. Rafia looked like a wolf seeing a lamb gambol right into its den and try to stare it down.

Zebrin took tea with Tuesday, while Carole followed Rafia to the training halls. As they chatted about rhymes and metres, Tuesday tried not to think about what her love was going through. Indeed, Carole returned to her with a black eye, a sprained wrist and some championship bruises–but Rafia was looking on her with something very close to respect.

"She didn't tap out. Incredible, for a Terran–but of course she was raised on Vers."

Over tea, Zebrin had politely interrogated Tuesday as to the scope of the princess's trade mission. He also expected some change to come, and meant to ensure that he and Rafia got the best of it.

"Since the death of the Terran researcher, Dr Troyard, efforts to elucidate the ancient Aldnoah technology of Vers have practically ceased. The ancient replicators we have are irreplaceable; we can produce the metals we need, but barely enough food from replicators to sustain a handful of nobles. If we could unlock Aldnoah's secrets, then true independence from perfidious Terra…"

Their hosts were certainly far from unobjectionable, but they honoured their debts; the girls hadn't got so many friends left that they could afford to complain. Zebrin was largely an entertaining conversationalist, for an Orbital Knight. Between touching observations on his fiancé's courage, strength and beauty (Rafia blushed redder than her coat) he mentioned that Castle Zebrin was in constant geostationary orbit above Mozambique and pointed it out on a map.

"My mother came from South Africa," Carole's eyes misted up, "Just over there."

Zebrin knew a great deal more about Terra. He was quite smart enough to realise that Versian racial superiority was a nonsense, but openly despise the Earth as much as any knight, to ensure his place among them. Carole thought that made him the worst–but she was glad that her love had even shown kindness and grace to people like these.

Carole and Tuesday barely slept a night in Castle Zebrin. When a siren hurled them out of bed and soldiers hustled them onto the bridge, the Count's face was paler than it had ever been.

"Her highness, Princess Asseylum…was assassinated by the Terrans less than an hour ago, in Japan."

-0-

_"…all knights who honour chivalry and righteous vengeance, chastise this outrage! Launch Operation Earthfall!" _

Count Saazbaum, leader of the Orbital knights, was calling for an immediate attack on Earth from every computer screen. Tuesday wept into Carole's shoulder. Rafia, Asseylum's judo instructor and childhood friend, was twisted with passion from her fists to her shoulders and lips.

"…we have long prepared for this." Zebrin put a steady hand on her shoulder, "The bulk of our Landing Castles will descend on their designated targets, across the Earth. Then we will face the enemy in battle, and "

"Yes. For our princess. A hammer of justice from the heavens."

"…the target…is Mozambique?" Carole got out.

"The capital city of Maputo will be wiped out by our impact. It will be necessary to confine you as an enemy alien, Miss Stanley, but you will be unharmed."

"No, kill me if you want!" Carole shouted, "I'm a Terran! I had as much to do with poor Asseylum in Japan as all those people in Maputo do!"

"Be quiet, Terran. This outrage could never have occurred without the collusion of the entire United Earth Force–"

"Princess Asseylum w-wanted _peace!_" Tuesday almost screamed, "She'd want you to find the real murderers, not destroy cities of innocent people–there's no honour in that! At least wait for his majesty's command, please, wait…"

The two Orbital Knights–commanders, trained warriors, with a million deaths at their fingertips, and waiting on their word–stared down at the two young singers. Blood pounded in Carole's head, Tuesday was almost collapsing in tears, but they both knew this was a moment of fate. They had found each other, travelled across space–_somehow_, to this moment and these people–they had to speak.

"We cannot wait." Zebrin turned away, to the global hologram over the bridge, "Castles are already descending on Moscow, New Orleans, Tokyo, and Beijing. Even to delay in avenging the princess will cost us honour, prestige–"

"_Prestige?_" Rafia suddenly burst out, "That is not what this is about! This is about an innocent, trusting young girl, who came in peace and was murdered by treacherous swine! A thousand cities wouldn't make up for her death, but you're still thinking of reputation, what other knight might say! Do this like a man, by sacred Vers, for true honour!"

"You're letting your rage control you, Rafia," Zebrin fired back, "Or you would never call the deaths of a million helpless non-combatants honourable! The princess _will_ be avenged, but this is the promised war, the destiny of Vers. We will win the Earth if we act now, we will lose everything if we do not!"

Carole screamed a lot of unprintable things at Zebrin. The count blocked Rafia's slap, but her blow to his stomach staggered him. The two knights stared at each other, breathing hard–anguish, rage and passion warred between them.

"Leave us!" Rafia shouted at both the girls and the soldiers on the bridge, "We will settle this question between ourselves."

"You're going to decide whether or not to kill a million people?" Carole shouted, as the soldiers pushed both her and Tuesday away.

"Yes, we will. That is the burden of an Orbital Knight of Vers," Rafia's glare forced the girls into silence, "A heavy one–thank you for reminding us of that. Now leave, before I kill you for your impertinence."

Carole and Tuesday waited in a sitting room, for the most terrible hour of their lives. They both bemoaned and praised each other's reckless words, and clung to each other as if in an earthquake. At any moment, indeed, the floor of the Castle might fall beneath them, trailing fire through the atmosphere, toward a crowded African city.

As they thought of Moscow, New Orleans, Tokyo, Beijing and so many other cities, they could finally do nothing but kneel together and pray. To the silent, alien gods of Vers; to the God Carole's mother had never stopped praying to. For poor Asseylum, for Zebrin and Rafia, for everyone on Earth and the days they would face.

-0-

_"Fire." _Count Ertegan whispered. An operator hit a button. Castle Ertegan began its blazing 35,000-mile descent towards the centre of Santiago, Chile. Within hours, the Orbital Knight strode through the blasted ruins in his Kataphrakt, destroying every primitive Terran mech he saw with blast of plasma. The threat detection A.I., developed by Roddy of Clan Simmons, enabled a single Martian Kataphrakt to hold down an entire Terran nation.

When FTL comms had carried the news to Vers–Asseylum's death, war with Terra, twenty five major cities wiped out, and Versian mecha spreading out to claim the Earth, in the name of their martyred princess–Roddy rang Gus Goldman on a secure line, hyperventilating through tears.

"It was Saazbaum who had the princess killed, but they'll never pin it on him. We've got no way of knowing where the girls are, there's nothing we can do from Vers. Look, the Terrans should be smart enough to get the weaknesses you built into our kats–"

"–_I built them._ I just wanted to make giant robots, I never though they'd be mad enough to use them, to kill all those people! Vers never had the numbers to ever possibly conquer Terra, unless they wipe all the people out! Oh, Gus, Gus, what have I done?"

Roddy heard the Resistance leader punching a wall, several times. His voice was weary and broken when he spoke, but gentle as a mother bear.

"Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. Pray, or get stinking drunk if you can. It's okay, son. The worst has damn well happened…but we'll do whatever we can."

-0-

When Carole and Tuesday were escorted back onto the bridge, Zebrin and Rafia were holding hands. It was their own experience that a jolly good row was sometimes the best thing–though the marital relations of two space warlords were not, in themselves, the concern of the moment.

"We have directed Castle Zebrin towards a military base outside Maputo." Count Zebrin stated, "Some outlying slums will be flattened in the blast; that can't be helped. Maputo will choose between fealty to Clan Zebrin-Rafia, or annihilation."

"My nobles will drop Castle Rafia outside Addis Abada, in Ethiopia." Rafia crossed her arms, grim-faced, "Count Cruhteo has seized Japan; that arch-Loyalist won't rest until all Asseylum's killers are brought to justice. What I can do, I will."

Carole and Tuesday couldn't think what to say. It seemed they had saved millions of people from fiery death, somehow–what could be said or felt about that?

"What about South Africa?"

"It shall be conquered by Vers, it shall _be_ Vers–New Humanity will claim the Earth, as is our destiny and right. You should remain in the Castle during the fighting, Lady Simmons. Your mother would hold us responsible if any harm came to you."

"…has my mother spoken against what Vers is doing?" Tuesday's voice was small, but brave, "Does the Emperor even know about any of this?"

"War is war, girl!" Rafia grated, "Asseylum has been killed by our enemies; we must strike back, and we will! What more do you want from us?"

"…nothing, Countess Rafia. Count Zebrin. I, Lady Tuesday Simmons…hereby renounce my citizenship in Vers and my noble birthright. You can throw me in prison, or anything, but I would rather be counted a slave with the Terrans than called a noble of Vers, that does such things!"

The soldiers on the bridge drew back in horror; every one of them dreamt of nothing but rising to nobility. Rafia considered claiming that Lady Simmons had gone insane, but Tuesday's eyes were unmistakably resolute and open.

"…such words are open treason. Do you mean to oppose sacred Vers? Go over to the Terrans? You'll be a Martian to them, they would tear you to pieces!"

"They'll just see a young girl with a guitar, Milady." Carole answered, clinging to Tuesday's hand. "That's all we are; just musicians singing for peace. That's our honour and our way. This is us."

Rafia would have spared them for their courage, but in front of the soldiers on the bridge, she had to arrest them both. In the weeks that followed, Zebrin even threatened to torture Carole, if Tuesday wouldn't recant her declaration, but she was immovable. Finally, he turned both girls lose into the conquered province of Southern Africa, to go where they wished.

At Castle Rafia, Lady Angela (Looking sharp as a diamond in her perfectly cut grey uniform) ordered their landing point shifted from Addis Abada. Minutes later, as the Castle begun to shake its way down through the stratosphere, a bespectacled young operator looked up from her instruments in horror.

"We're still heading for the planned target, Milady!"

"Kimura, you–! I told you, I ordered you–!"

"A traitor has hacked into the guidance system. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry–"

Rafia flew in to find her Castle stood in the smoking, flattened ruin that had been Ethiopia's capital city. The traitor, a pale young soldier with dark hair, was brought before her.

"I avenged her. This is Heaven's judgement." Private Cybelle muttered, "My Princess, our goddess, every Terran must die for your sake–!"

With a violent oath, Rafia snapped Cybelle's neck with her bare hands.

-0-

**Two Years Later**

The second Earth-Mars war was over. Asseylum, who had not, in fact, been assassinated, was now the Empress of Vers. Many Versian Counts still held territory on Earth, but she had forbidden further hostilities. The people of Earth, starving, grief-stricken and battered, were expecting a third war to descend on them within months. Fighting between Terrans who'd either resisted or sworn loyalty to Vers was still ongoing in some fractured states.

Africa, already ravaged by colonialism and war, had been the site of the last major Versian offensive, under the command of Count Slaine Saazbaum-Troyard. His adoptive father, Count Saazbaum, was dead. Slaine, who had supposedly plotted Asseylum's supposed assassination was–supposedly–also dead. Rafia and Zebrin had died side by side in Africa, along with hundreds of UFE troops and civilians, among burning villages and the wreckage of empire.

The survivors were streaming towards a marketplace in Kampala, Uganda, to hear some music. There were demobbed soldiers and former guerrillas, children with burn scars and lost limbs. People from every tribe who'd lost their homes and fled their lands. Hardly daring to believe their world might change, or would ever stop sweeping over them like a bushfire with massacre and loss.

Carole and Tuesday faced them all. In the past two years they had crossed warzones, starving under the heat of day and the cold of night. They'd passed through battlefield hospitals as patients and nurses, hidden for hours in ditches from bandit militias. Tuesday had lost her family and nation, as Carole had lost her family and her friend. Carole had tried to fight off a soldier with her bare hands, and Tuesday had needed to pick up a gun when she'd failed.

They'd lost both their instruments too, that had carried them through so much–but the friends they'd made in South Africa had found them new ones.

The corners of their eyes showed all they'd seen, before their twentieth birthdays–but they were still smiling. They sang from the life and hope within them, that had suffered with the people they reached out to now.

_Glowing touchpaper, the sparks fly all around,_

_Out of control and you burned me to the ground._

_Where you gonna turn when your whole world is burning?_

_This is the beginning, don't give up…_

_'Cos after the fire new roads are drawn_

_Nothing to cry for, new dreams are born_

_Out of the ruins flowers will grow_

_People rebuilding, stone by stone_

_After the fire, fire, fire…_

_Wash away my memory,_

_Purify my body._

_Wanna feel the heat rush over me…_

_'Cos after the fire new roads are drawn_

_Nothing to cry for, new dreams are born_

_Out of the ruins flowers will grow_

_People rebuilding, stone by stone_

_After the fire, fire, fire… _

The people who'd seen their homes blown down and burnt saw a miracle and believed. They clapped their hands and danced together. As Carole danced her fingers over her keyboard and swayed her shoulders, as Tuesday strummed her guitar and threw her head back, their smiles were beyond happiness or sorrow; true joy.

Their songs were heard from battered radios across sub-Saharan Africa. Survivors in ruined New Orleans and Tokyo would hear their voices, one day soon. The people would think on the war and know it was over, guns hanging loose from hands as they listened. They would remember peace; in the shadow of the Landing Castles, face the task of keeping it. More than a seven-minute miracle–but this music spoke of three billion reasons the Earth could be built again. Leaders, labourers, nurses, students and artists, building a path of peace. And all over Earth, like a twin spirit of music, Carole and Tuesday sang their bit.

After the last encore they moved through the crowd, talking with as many of them as they could. Hearing their stories, encouraging them in all their vocations. Scarred women laughed and joked with them. Refugees from bush villages touched Tuesday's hair like a blessing, and local bands leapt onto the stage after them. A huge ex-soldier with a gentle voice, and the woman who accompanied him with a fiddle, left them spellbound again at the wonders old Earth overflowed with.

After dancing and singing past midnight and being guided back to their lodgings–though about a thousand people had told them to never stop singing–the girls drove out to Lake Victoria the next morning. A rippling blue plain–more water than they had seen in their lifetimes, on Mars–stretched into the distance. Clouds moved gently above them, like tremendous flags, white gulls wheeled through the air. Everything was free, fearless and more beautiful than they had imagined.

"Carole, I'm never going to stop singing about this world, and it's people," Tuesday whispered, "It feels like I'm home with you, where we belong."

"There's still a lot of bad," Carole teasingly shrugged, "But I never thought there'd ever be so much good."

"How can you be the most cynical girl in the solar system–and _still_ sing about hopes and dreams?"

"I got _you_, babe."

Tuesday looked both ways–some things still _weren't_ right on Earth–and then rolled onto Carole through the sand. Their cheap, worn clothes and their hair got very sandy, as they kissed their hearts out under the blue sky.

"Tues, I don't know if I love you more every day, or if I'll never love you so much as when you gave up Vers for me. I mean, you gave up everything, even risked our lives, argh! I do tunes, not words! I just love you, Tues."

"Mmm. Love me more, now…"

"…Tues? Do you think we'll ever go back to Vers again?"

"Don't even say it. We should get a bodyguard, so mother can't _take_ me back. I want to see Roddy again, and even the Empress…there's nothing I'd want more than for the people suffering on Vers to hear our songs. But we couldn't ever go back until things have changed there, someday."

"Someday, they will. But I've got a whole new world to show you, first! Home on Earth is anywhere you are, lovergirl. We could stay on the road forever."

Carole and Tuesday spent the best part of a day strolling among the slim, tall trees and along the beach. Then they walked back to the car with their keyboard and guitar in the back, and drove off into the sunset.

-0-

**Five Years Later **

Even after the war had decimated the nobility, cost more Versian lives and Castles than had been imagined, and benefited the labouring serfs of Mars not at all, change had taken its time to come for Vers. Countess Angela, haunted by nightmares of Addis Abada's destruction, had funnelled all the resources she had received as Zebrin and Rafia's appointed heir into a certain project. Sergeant Gus Goldman, the old Resistance leader, had succumbed to a heart attack before deliverance came. Finally, Baron Tao had secretly perfected the theories of the late Dr Troyard. The Emperor and his nobles had reserved the power of Aldnoah for themselves, to work the primordial alien technology that made survival possible on Mars. As of yesterday, every human being on Mars had this power.

There had been very little fighting; the nobles and their loyalists were outnumbered, and their mantle of divinity was gone. Tao was presently offering Empress Asseylum and her consort the choice of continuing as a powerless constitutional monarch, or taking her place in history as the Versian Marie Antionette.

There could have been blood in the streets and vengeance; but instead there was singing as the walls came down. The few Terrans to be found were carried on Versian shoulders in honour. The war had made it clear that Terrans were not decedent, mindless savages, as the nobles had claimed. Many Versians had decided that they were a superhuman people, instead, and owed an unpayable debt since Earthfall. Christians, hidden even on Vers, knelt and prayed in the street, as young nobles embraced third-class labourers with grateful shame.

_I was born in the dust, yeah, in a broken hab,_

_Oh, and just like the dome, I've been breaking ever since._

_It's been a long time, a long time coming,_

_But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will._

_They say we're all different, but know we're the same,_

_We need something new, for all our pain,_

_It's been a long, a long time coming,_

_But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will._

_There have been times that I thought I couldn't last for long,_

_But hold me now and I'll carry on._

_It's been a long, a long time coming,_

_But I know a change is gonna come, oh yes it will._

Some others were singing 'Vers _reverse_'. Ezekiel smiled at that. With Angela, Tao, Baron Spencer and Roddy, the underground singers Pytor and GGK, who Carole and Tuesday had inspired–and with a little secret help from an Empress, who'd finally realised that bastard feudal absolutism was the most miserable form of government ever conceived–Ezekiel had been one of the leaders who had guarded the revolution, and would now guide Vers on a path of peace. Secret Security had tortured him for days over his pirate rap videos (He still walked with a cane, and smiled with shadowed eyes), but they'd thought that had broken him, rather than driven him to dig deep and plan big. Nothing had been efficient on Vers, not even the Though Police. Thankfully, the nightmare was over.

He was waiting at the palace space-hanger for an arrival from Earth–the Terran that some called a villain, others the last hero of Vers. He had broken parole from a secret life sentence for class A war crimes, to take his place in the new government, though it had come out that Saazbaum, not he, had started the whole war in the first place. Earth-Mars relations, and Mars itself, were going to have as many problems as ever–but with the nobles out of the way, they could work on solving them.

Slaine Troyard stepped off the rickety spaceship, beside a slim woman with rose-coloured hair. She hung back as the white-haired man took Ezekiel's measure. Amer could tell he'd gone through torture and loss as well; the former rapper didn't have so many deaths on his soul, but he hadn't come within an ace of becoming Emperor of two planets five years ago, either.

"Ezekiel, I presume? Miss Stanley sends her regards. She and her partner are already planning a tour of Vers, I understand. You seem rather surprised, for a prophet."

"I…did something terrible, last time I saw her. Don't know what I could say to her, I always, always…" Amer wiped his eyes, and glared at Troyard, "Your princess is upstairs. Want to try and make up with her now, whitey?"

"I'm sorry, I didn't realise. We have more in common than I thought." After a minute's silence, Slaine extended his hand, "May what comes next be better than all we have endured?"

"Let's get a tritium mine on Jupiter within the year, Mister Troyard."

Amer shook Slaine's hand firmly, under a dome and a tawny sky.


End file.
